by Mayank Chugh
as I lay/ under the Joshua tree/ I hear the rain/ drown/ the rainbow history/ while I cry/ with my Yellowstone/ earth/ rumbling in pain/ her resilience wavering/ my love/ endangered/ there’s nothing wrong/ with her you said/ it’s all a lie/ the fireplace/ in your homes/ fuming/ with her black blood/ since when/ it’s a lie/ science & suffering/ a cure it is/ for survival/ with instincts/ if you can/ save your mothers/ with pills & potions/ why not mine/ don’t you see her/ melting/ with betrayal/ breathing hardly/ with her mouth/ cracked open
Author’s Note: This piece is based on the urgency of climate change. Last week we saw rippling videos and images of flooding in the Yellowstone national park, which led to closing of the park in decades. We also discovered world's biggest gas leak of methane in a coal mine in Russia. Although these two events might be unrelated, they are correlative and suggestive of what is about to come. Science does not lie. As a scientist and inhabitant, it hurts to see the planet, the only home we have known, slowly dying, and not doing enough about it. I hope you will resonate will this personal work.
A cell biologist and diversity activist at Harvard Medical School, Mayank Chugh is a poet and an artist. He is a selected poet at Through These Realities, a New England art installation project 2022 challenging the narratives of mass media that invalidates experiences of people of colour. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative Northeast, The Lumiere Review, Spry Literary Journal, and Pepper Mag.Twitter/Instagram @mayank_mchugh