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| “Can’t breathe” by Hong Kong artist Benson Koo at society6. |
I CAN’T BREATHE
said Eric Garner, his loosies scattered
like toothpicks on the street, his chest
and neck compressed, his body battered,
then prone, as Daniel Pantaleo pressed
down harder until nothing mattered,
leaving questions for some later inquest.
WE CAN’T BREATHE
said Hong Kong protesters whose lungs
filled with tear gas as police fired
more cannisters and aimed their guns
toward their hearts, hoping they would grow tired
of trying to imagine worlds of other suns
where democracy was still admired.
THEY CAN’T BREATHE
said medics in hospital rooms, as patients
arrived in great numbers, gasping for air
while tobacco CEOs made deals in spacious
office suites for vaping products, aware
that regulations are slim and use contagious,
betting as usual that not enough would care.
SHE CAN’T BREATHE
said the driver who found a woman walking
alone on the roadway as Paradise fires raged,
her car abandoned long before, tires melting.
From his pickup, too hot to touch, he gauged
the odds of rescue and the dangers of stalking
cinders, then leapt out—one catastrophe assuaged.
THEY CAN’T BREATHE
said migrants still floating on choppy seas
about fellow travelers catapulted overboard
flailing, then sinking, while they watched with unease.
They had prayed to gods when they climbed aboard
these flimsy rafts and trembling skiffs. Those pleas
have thinned to terror as they continue seaward.
HE CAN’T BREATHE
said the mother whose wheezing child
struggled for each breath in and out,
while methane gas levels went wild
and fossil fuel fumes expanded throughout
their Appalachian hills. Even with their air defiled.
some still said there’s nothing to worry about.
WE CAN’T BREATHE
said Southeast Asian villagers choking in heat
and smog. Their farmlands cleared for palm oil,
nothing remains to be burned except the peat
which smolders like angry words beneath soil
while carbon fills the air with coppery sleet
and once lush jungles are forever spoiled.
I CAN’T BREATHE
said Mother Earth as Amazonian flames
joined those in Africa and Alaska to devour
her greenest places. As thick forests turned to arid plains
and savannahs, what once were leafy bowers
degraded to dieback deserts. Scientists maintain
some hope but she’s fast losing respiratory powers
Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY. Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses will be published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020.
