Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

|  |  The  
summers   become  hotter  &   hotter.  |  |  
Unbearable  &  luminous,  the  refrain  of  
the  song  of  extinction— 

—Dante Di Stefano / “Green Burial Unsonnet”

“But the scale of this year’s heat — amplified by human-caused factors and the burning of fossil fuels — is still well beyond what most scientists had thought possible. Some have theorized that planetary warming may be accelerating. Others have said there’s not enough evidence. What they agree upon, though, is that the earth is trending toward more extreme heat.

That means that the experiences of 2023 can seem astonishing in the short-term but will one day look tame.”

— Chico Harlan / “The climate future arrived in 2023. It left scars across the planet” / The Washington Post

The wind is against us and the ash of war covers the earth. We see our spirit flash on a razor blade, a helmet’s curve. The brackish springs of autumn salt our wounds.
        Doom drags at history’s face—our history needled with terror, a meadow of wild thorns.

— Adonis / “Elegy for the Times”

It’s not just that the planet’s climate is unravelling, though that fact adds to the pressure to act which would be felt by any rational occupant of the White House. April was the eleventh straight hottest month on record, and the consequences of the climate crisis will likely be dominant crises during the next four years.

— Bill McKibben / “It’s a Climate Election Now” / The New Yorker

Crying is inevitable

when headlines read

like requiems.

— Gloria Muñoz / “Llorona”

The last of Venezuela’s glaciers has disappeared, scientists say, despite an unusual government effort to save it.

The demise of La Corona, downgraded to an ice field after shrinking from more than 1,100 acres to less than five, makes this South American nation the only one in the Andes range without a glacier — but it’s unlikely to be the last.

— Matthew Hay Brown / “A mountainous country loses its last glacier” / The Washington Post

My  children  &  my   children’s   children  
will  inherit   the  edges of cumulonimbus  
clouds,     the       unexpected      sunflower  
blooming   from   a     second-story     rain 
gutter,   the  gentleness   of   the  marbling 
sunlight  on  the  fur  of a  rabbit  stilled in  
a  suburban  backyard.  |  |  I  am  in   love 
 with    the   Earth.   |  |   There    are    still  
blackberries  enough   to  light the    brain  
with the star charts of a sweetness— 

—Dante Di Stefano / “Green Burial Unsonnet”

What I’m Listening To:

how come every time we go to war and march downtown against the war, the people on the other side keep dying anyway

— The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick / “Mr. Settled Score”