by Miliann Kang
Soft corals turned into blackened sponges
pelican beaks dripping slick crude
BP’s CEO grins that the spill is relatively tiny in the very big ocean
propaganda to disperse and contain the hubris of no backup plan
Tea partiers blast Obama while driving SUVs at 12 miles/gallon
the president responds that he can’t just suck it up with a straw
No heads roll, no carbon is taxed, no crisis turns into opportunity
meanwhile we drain the blood of soldiers and citizens in another gulf
My child asks on day 3, day 11, day 39, day 64 what can we do?
we collect coins and send Dawn dishwashing detergent
The planet threatens to deport our whole lot
but we thirst only for more snake oil
60,000 barrels of it a day
an Exxon Valdez every four days
A heart with a burst aorta will gush, shrivel then die,
and so the earth, unless we stop spilling blood and oil
and plug the whole
Miliann Kang is an Associate Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her poems have been published in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. Her book The Managed Hand: Race, Gender and the Body in Beauty Service Work was published in 2010 by the University of California Press.
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