These three poems by Erika Gill contemplate inevitability, skulk the streets of Denver in early summer, and preemptively mourn the effects of Climate Change…
by: Erika Gill
If it comes If it comes, let it come let it float, nebulous into safe space make a mooring or don’t let it is all I’m saying Control is an illusion weighted blanket suffocation imagination stuck on two scenes let it grow, change, die Let it die release it to death as you will, one day, release yourself as you have with others fingers forced open all that is dropped to the floor forgotten Let it fall if it must fall and believe me that it must it must fall it is the rule of empires that endings are beginnings destruction can be beautiful beauty can break you your oft broken heart set free with the knowledge that beauty holds so little value in the true course of things.
Field Log: Denver, 10 May By the tenth of May the Denver trees have begun to bloom and leaf and it is green. So green I laugh, elated. Some things I have seen: flowers of six shades, an alien – poppy in bloom, translucent hairs cover the stalk and pod, its neighboring flower a violent red, a swarm of black flies, bearded irises proud spikes thrust into the air, a beetle on its back. Someone (I dislike) has written “fuck earth” on the pavement and had it been me It would have said “fuck, Earth” reverently, the way lovers do.
When we are all drowning When we are all drowning these tasks will cease to matter submerged dissolved into acidic slurry and I will miss sliding my fingers along your hair and the clean sky When we are all asphyxiated I will no longer care to look in mirrors your empty pockets immaterial I’ll have plucked the final leaf from the last wilting plant as it returns to the earth She is calling us ringing a dinner bell, a klaxon inaudible if they have their way our bodies will never stop moving never to alight gently one last petal, to rest.
Erika Gill (they/she) is a writer who lives, writes and builds community in Denver, CO. They grew up longest in Victorville, CA, which is notable only in being the filming location of The Hills Have Eyes. Erika’s poetry may be found in Rigorous, Sublunary Review, petrichor, and other spaces. Twitter: @invariablyso.
