POETRY: NIKKI REIMER

I WONDER IF I WILL EVER MANAGE TO WRITE A GOOD POEM ABOUT HEAT DEATH

This trajectory is all on us for inability 
to fact check or read critically.
The sparring kangaroos were dancing 
with rain-joy, we said.
That’s fighting, said the scientist, 
old photo. Those kangaroos are ash by now.
Pictures of koalas in renal failure
foregoing their fear of us 
to lap water from the road were deemed 
“cute.” No, no, said the scientist, it’s not cute. 
That creature is dying.
We’d moved on. Wombats shepherd 
other critters into their burrows! Stewards of the underbush!
Not quite right, said the scientist, wombat burrows are enormous. 
Most likely the wombat was hiding in another chamber.
Too busy anthropomorphizing, we’d already created a hashtag. 
#WombatEmpathy will save us!
 
I asked ryan what comes next,
            and he said,
          either the complete transformation
            of existing relationships
            or the heat death of the
            planet. One of those.
 
My heart’s on relationships, and kangaroos, and scientists.
No time for settler logic.
No atheists in burrows, friend.
No one is coming to save us.

I ❤️  ALBERTA’S ENERGY

take the elevator to my second-floor
apartment bust out the biodiesel 
firmware use medical grade plastic 
bottles for my saline nasal 
rinse gotta keep those 
mucus membranes clean for u 
and the dust bowl, babe, gotta 
run that old car all up and down 
this city’s sprawl I try to keep warm 
through frigid prairie winters feel appropriate 
guilt at the plastic produce bags I bring home 
from the grocery store 
/ forget the mesh ones 
every time / I’ve gone full enemy of the state assault vehicle
applied to be the next poet-in-residence for carbon capture 
(mass species death, but make it fashion)
everything you see is development 
gently falling leaves in the inner city: development
Enoch Sales heritage home fire: development 
empty condo tower on empty condo tower: 
the firing of 5,000 Albertan nurses in the year 
2019 / 9 dead from fires in South Wales since Monday
now 17
now 24, meanwhile 
we’re bursting out the seams over here:
Montana, Drake, East Village, Tuscany
new history razed for imported ideas
another thundering swing 
from settler colonialism’s long neoliberal tail
clearing a path for the rule of the patch
by the patch for the patch
for the capitalist overlord bosses of our demise,
for the dinosaurs who never left us

Nikki Reimer (she/her) is a carbon-based life form of Ukrainian and Russian Mennonite descent who lives on the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta. She may or may not be undead. She writes poetry, essays and criticism, yells on the internet, and makes digital art. Published books are My Heart is a Rose Manhattan, DOWNVERSE and [sic].