WEBVTT

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These are two poems from the
more recent project, which

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is kind of dealing with the
central valley of California,

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where I partially grew
up as an early site

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for the ecological devastation
that we're seeing now

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across the entire continent.

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And the way that
this very much formed

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like sort of the landscape
of my coming of age.

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Anthropocene anxiety disorder.

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Our whole world is burning.

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I am terrified by the
mundaneness of it all.

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The scent of smoke.

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A season of its own.

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Sometimes, I mistake the
breeze passing through my hair

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for the soft approach of flame.

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A poem has no allegiance to the
truth, and even as I tell it,

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I fear you won't believe.

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Last summer, paradise burnt.

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Every newspaper
ran the same photo.

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McDonald's golden arches
swaddled in flame.

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Forgive me.

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I was, for a moment, glad to
see my stepfather's home vanish.

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I did not think of the
dead, watched Snapchats

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of the freeway medians,
their camisoles of smoke

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and remembered five
summers before,

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waking in a fire's path.

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The strange calm
in our truck's cab.

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The campsite flickering
orange in the rearview.

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Do you think that we'll
survive long enough for this

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to read as fiction.

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There are cameras floating
in space turned inward

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that will outlive us.

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The Arctic smolders
in their lenses.

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Ah, and I wonder if
it's the last monument

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man will build large
enough for God to note.

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