Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

It turns out you can kill the earth,
Crack it open like an egg.
It turns out you can murder the sea,
Poison your own children
Without even thinking about it.

— Michael Sims / “Who Will Tell Them?”

Tens of millions of people in Indonesia are now suffering in swathes of thick smoke caused by “slash and burn” agriculture and exacerbated by the hot conditions. In India, ground-level ozone from vehicle fumes and industry has emerged as the key summer threat, while outside its megacities there have been protests in areas affected by toxic coal dust. Across the northern hemisphere this summer, wildfires driven by the climate crisis have spread poor air across continents – already, 1.5 million people globally die every year from the impacts of wildfire smoke.

— Fiona Harvey / “Air pollution affects us all, but it’s not inescapable – there is a way we can breathe easier” / Down to Earth

We waved them off long ago. So why
Do they who are no longer here
Still wave to us? The time to sow
Approaches, and the land awaits seeds
As the wind waits for weeds . . .

— Dimitri Psurtsev / “[We waved them off long ago. So why]”

Half the continent was sand at this point. Deserts all over the world, growing, moving. Nothing you could do about it. But okay, sure, send the intern out to push the sand around. She pushed one way, the sand pushed another, and that is perhaps not so different from most jobs since the beginning of the world.

— Deb Olin Unferth / Earth 7

My God, what is that shrieking? The man doesn’t work here,
he says. Reconcile yourself to wait in the darkness.
What did I think spiritual desert meant? Surely not that

lump of nothing I was an hour ago on the couch, wielding
the remote, spooning mango sorbet out of a container.
It should feel, I explain to the self-checkout screen

(how did I get here?), punching in my customer number,
more important.

— Donna Masini / “Midnight in the Pain-Relief Aisle of CVS Thinking About “The Cloud of Unknowing”

You may not have felt it, but the earth beneath our feet is getting twitchier, and global heating is to blame. As temperatures surge and climate breakdown accelerates, interactions between climate and geology are becoming ever more apparent – as marked by the recent horrific events in Nepal and Tibet. We still have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to the idea that a changing climate can impact what scientists call the geosphere, but the evidence has long been incontestable.

— Bill McGuire / “THE NEPAL AND TIBET FLOOD IS A WARNING: Melting snow and ice will bring more disasters around the world” / Cool Earth, on Substack

Here, we’re bodily in pause mode,
sluggish Louisiana mud.

The wage floor’s—$7.25
folks grind all day, yet barely thrive.

We’re even told Russia’s to blame
if you can believe that (we don’t).

— Rodrigo Toscano / “Poets of Shenzhen”

What I’m Listening To:

I can’t keep googling
To prove that’s not going to happen
Who tore my skin and planted these seeds
I pick and pull but all I see are weeds, weeds, weeds
I’m a liar

— Mhaol / “Scam Manifesto”