11/21/2020 POETRY: NIKKI REIMERI 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].
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