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Proceeds will be donated to RAVEN ​& Climate Justice Toronto.
A warning, a movement, a collection borne of protest.
In Watch Your Head, poems, stories, essays, and artwork sound the alarm on the present and future consequences of the climate emergency. Ice caps are melting, wildfires are raging, and species extinction is accelerating. Dire predictions about the climate emergency from scientists, Indigenous land and water defenders, and striking school children have mostly been ignored by the very institutions – government, education, industry, and media – with the power to do something about it.

Writers and artists confront colonization, racism, and the social inequalities that are endemic to the climate crisis. Here the imagination amplifies and humanizes the science. These works are impassioned, desperate, hopeful, healing, transformative, and radical.
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This is a call to climate-justice action.

...Watch Your Head does not disappoint. It serves as a warning to heed, a reminder to be thought of often, and a well-thought-out piece of art. Throughout the anthology, readers encounter pieces that provoke and insist, demanding attention, consideration, action, and creativity. Essays and stories and images alike bring about questions and statements on Indigenous rights, white privilege, exploitation of land and people, colonial power structures, place, home, language, and imagination.
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POETRY: ELI TAREQ EL BECHELANY-LYNCH

9/27/2020

 
HOME = GARBAGE
for Khalo


                looking out the window
                              from my teta’s balcony 
                at the news on my laptop
                          some days     they look the same
                        and some days they don’t
                my aunt says this is weird
                                there have never been any military tanks
                                               in zalka before
                                       three days in a row
         imagine the difference between
                             this looks weird
                                          and military men directing traffic
                                                        on a daily basis
                                  rifles slung across their shoulders
                                            waving the cars to keep going
                                                            stop, turn left
                                              cars in two lanes somehow
                                                            fitting themselves four wide
                                                                          stop, keep going, turn left

                                         this country is corrupt says my uncle
                                    this country smells like garbage
                         contracts with the garbage company left unrenewed
                                       military men pinching their noses
                                                      while directing traffic
                                                                   if we can’t manage garbage
                                                  can we do anything right?
                                                    we stop, keep going, turn left

            people sling bags of rotten garbage
                         over mountain sides
                                      over roadsides
                                                     drop garbage onto houses
                                                                     into the ocean
                                      anywhere but garbage disposal
                                                    where to dispose
                                                                  when there is nowhere

                                      four months and my uncle is hospitalized
                                                      lungs filled with pollution
                                                                    hundreds of people in the country
                                                                                                polluted
                                                                       


                                       beirut protesters push
                      industrial garbage bins
                                     into the middle of the road
                                                  try pretending that doesn’t exist
                                                  aimed at government officials
                                                                refusing press
                                                                              people start to move them   
                                                                       most people drive around them
                                                                                           an obstacle course
                                                                                                         in preserving ignorance
                                                                                  let us press our ignorance deeper
                                                              throw bags over the shoulders of refugees
                                                                            this country is too small
                                                                                         as though that’s the only problem
                                                                                         religion into garbage
                                                                                                         brown sludge building



     when it’s too hot to stay inside
                    my family heads to the beach
                                    stops at a checkpoint
                                            on the way up the mountains
                                     the military man with a rifle
                                         across his shoulders barely looks
                                                   wipes sweat off his brow
                    bored, nods, motions us forward
                                   the privilege of christianity
          there are hundreds of military checkpoints
                                                   in this tiny country
                    hundreds of bored military men
                                  stop, keep going, shmel
                                         there are thousands of palestinians
                                                 in refugee camps in this country
                              stop, undocumented, prohibited
                                                                movement hindered
                                                       by checkpoints in and out
                                          stop, undocumented, prohibited



I don’t live in zalka anymore
                             but every year I visit
                    the garbage keeps growing
                           downtown beirut skyscrapers
                                           hiding the garbage
                                 close the back windows
                                          or we’ll smell garbage
                     speeding on the only highway in lebanon
                                              past garbage piles in flames
                          taller than the gas station beside it
                                          my uncle’s lungs filled with garbage
             this country is corrupt, says my uncle
                           and I ask him why he’s still here
                                               it’s home, he says, his nose plugged
                                   my family came back 18 years ago
                                         this is home, they say
                                                      lungs filled with garbage
Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is a queer Arab poet living in Tio’tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory (Montreal). Their work has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 anthology, GUTS, the Shade Journal, Arc Poetry Magazine, Room Magazine, and elsewhere. They were longlisted for the CBC poetry prize in 2019. knot  body, a collection of creative non-fiction and poetry will be published September 2020 by Metatron Press, and The Good Arabs, a poetry collection, will be published in Fall 2021 with Metonymy Press. You can find them on Instagram and Twitter @theonlyelitareq. 

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