by Sue Repko
Hey, you, climate change scientist in the back row:
Go wash your mouth out with soap
and Exxon Valdez water
straight from the source.
And the rest of you:
$10K can buy a lot of White-out,
enough to change your story,
change your tune,
there’s still time to get on
the climate-change denial merry-go-round,
a psychedelic, mind-altering,
alternate universe
of findings, all the color of green,
the green that makes the world go ‘round.
Here’s what the good ol’ American Enterprise
Institute of Inaction
would like you to say:
Stay the course in your SUVs,
leave the refining, and the finer points, to us,
the ones who give the grades
the deciders
the empire builders
whose tanks are always empty –
Fill ‘er up! Hit the road!
Haven’t you heard?
School’s out, science is out,
so don’t forget to tune out
and turn in
your revisions.
Class dismissed.
Sue Repko is a writer, urban planner, community activist, and high school girls' basketball and softball coach. Her fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Bryant Literary Review, Kelsey Review, New Millennium Writings and online. Her nonfiction has appeared in newspapers, magazines and online. Her website is www.suerepko.com. She lives with her family in central New Jersey.