Undercurrent Page 3

  fluids that came from

  swallowed water

  that came from

  a river that came from a lake

  that came from a glacier

  receding from industrial glare

  pulse quickens

  shoulder tenses

  sorrow deepens

  send signals down spine

  fourteen facial bones adapt

  mandible stretches, maw yawns

  eyes float in moist sockets

  while body sweats

  & sweats, porous

  ongoing experiment

  rich in nurdles

  poor in ecological literacy

  atrazine in your armpits?

  pcbs in your pelvic core?

  furans in your feet?

  dioxins in your diaphragm?

  cells burst a chorus

  a need for reprieve

  iron, carbon, nitrogen flow

  oscillate, oxidize, optimize

  cellular symphony

  perennially sheds, regenerates

  walking mineral body

  a watery deposit

  chemical composition

  shared with the pacific

  kuroshio current within

  dark salt, sunlit

  benthic bowels

  a family forest of microfauna

  digesting come what may

  but thyroid’s receptors confused

  by polycylic pollution

  getting mixed signals

  hyper or hypo

  as plasticizers slide into

  sulfur, magnesium, phosphates

  calcium carbonate

  an orchestra of nutrients

  infiltrated by capital’s loud shout

  consumed while consuming

  disoriented in proprioceptive profusion

  seepage from decomposing bottle not just

  plastic but democracy degrading

  inner monster muscles up

  as daily toxins come & go

  a revolving door

  heads & shoulders

  knees & toes

  nose & mouth

  雨

  flush

  awaken to the gently unstoppable rush of rain landing on roofs, pavement, trees, porches, cars, balconies, yards, windows, doors, pedestrians, bridges, beaches, mountains, the patter of millions of small drops making contact everywhere, enveloping the city in a sheen of wet life, multiple gifts from the clouds, pooled over centuries and channelled to power us, rain propels our water-based bodies that eat other water-based bodies, mineral vegetable animal. when i turn on the shower, i turn my face and shoulders toward post-chlorinated rain. the tap releases free rain to slake our thirst, transformed through pipes and reservoirs. anonymous agent of all that we, unwitting beneficiaries, do. refusing the inertia of amnesia, i welcome the memory of rain sliding into sink and teacup, throat and bladder, tub and toilet. bountiful abundant carrier of what everyone emits into the clouds, be that exhale or smoke, belch or chemical combustion, flame or fragrance, the rain gives it all back to us in spates, a familiar sound, an increasingly mysterious substance

  pounce

  cloud meets retina

  smell the air, wait for rain

  iris refreshens with

  full-moon maple

  oceanic inhale

  ducks dunk & quack

  a migrating comedy

  crows cuss & crap

  badass neighbours

  scouting the scene, the grime

  alleyway moss

  quiet lichen witness

  this northern limit for the loquat

  creeping up

  skunk home, coyote cranny

  teenage wasteland where

  grannies sift through dumpsters

  rebraiding scraps & sense

  mizzle moistens sidewalk & skin

  feather & fur

  stubborn feral patience beneath

  delicious tulip tree

  plantain leaf persists

  My heart under your foot, sister of a stone. – Sylvia Plath

  sienna soaks in footsteps

  of rubber rainboots

  a light muck glistens

  beneath the breezeway

  arbutus bright, mud heavy

  pollution dodged?

  relocated, lodged

  in moist fleshy folds

  sweating a bullet

  up & down thyroid glands

  through veins of discontent

  discombobulated frenemy

  dispersed histories bioaccumulate

  returning in media res icymi

  bloodstream’s poisoned gift

  giving & giving & giving

  long after the plastic wrap’s

  chucked in the landfill

  trapped in economies

  of scale, built on porous shale

  see & do? unseen & undone

  tweeting up a storm with intersex bass

  riding the toxic rollercoaster

  techno treadmill trouncing

  underneath skin acting up

  while eyes stay on the screen

  that gets smaller & smaller

  faster & faster

  for the converted

  & those held hostage

  as filter bubbles pop

  as the mines dug up outside

  land inside body capsule

  hormonal hurts releasing

  tricks of the global trade

  my endocrine disruption

  for your muted phone

  your cancer

  for my keyboard

  a slow release traffic jam

  embedded each thin-skinned body

  beside the jewelled transmission tower

  a grenade

  bisphenol ache bursts a cell wall leaks plasma limpid, laden with toxic gifts courtesy of duped ontology corporate cancer embedded in diets, morsel by muscle, blight by bite, gradually accumulated illnesses blossom in our bellies, breasts, bladders, intestines testify to trace amounts hoarded in blood & bitumen, brimming with slow malignant release, remind us that biology is determined by chemistry cartels infiltrating our shampoos & synthetic textiles, room deodorizers & tin can linings receipt paper coatings & hand sanitizers sing a slow song of poison by a thousand exposures

  calm in chronic pollution, kindred water is a secret player reflecting industrial flaws back to us. naming the chemical creep is the first step in returning to our responsibilities, finding that duty itself is a ragged, fierce beauty, not just listing the toxins but disrupting their supply chain as we turn our gaze to how they seep intimately, expertly, into the creases we didn’t know we had, into our cracked lips & sweating armpits, moistening our dry eyes and callused heels. there is no substitute for earth’s authority, the living law of each inhale, each exhale, the quiet dignity of shared breath, necessary balance.

  We are undercurrent, overburden, the rolling earth, the spin that won’t be doctored, the healers who want to live well on this revolving planet. Our needs are few and our desires many. We need clean water. We need clean air. We need to eat plants powered by sunlight and earth. We need kinship that builds peaceful relations. We need to respect our differences without letting them kill, destroy, displace, incarcerate and oppress us. We need the small picture and the big picture. We need to share. We want to share. We see that obscene wealth for a few is not merely a sign of merit or talent or ability, but also a spiritual sickness, a bloated ego, a reduced capacity to respond to the suffering of one’s kin. We want everyone to understand that the tumours in the moose and whitefish and our neighbours are a sign of our failures, not our successes. We are tired of glorifications of war and the reenactments of its impoverished logic in our bureaucracies. We want to restore balance, right relat
ions, ethical being. We cannot afford delusional hierarchies. We will not race each other to the bottom. We commit to live up to the future’s call. We want our lives to not be wasted.

  motherboard

  tractor with gas pedal for brake

  rocks shovel rare earth selenium

  titanium reinforces dead worms

  dendritic fracked shale hydrogen

  sulfide muds water steel caked urge

  broken earth torn hole caterpillar

  rubble silent rain atrazine spring

  dirt dirge drip naphthalene

  hydrochloric acid ammonia

  benzene formaldehyde xylene

  atrazine puddle DDT remnants

  tree roots tree corpse petrified

  beetle decomposed dinosaur

  layers of ancestor bird bones

  wolf scat slow water transform

  old meat dead petals scattered

  pollen bee legs pine memory rich

  earth trickle groundwater house

  foundations broken grandmother

  old crow bark dust landfill moraine

  millennial circuit current stream

  holocene anthropocene morass

  mangle hair cracked femur turned

  dirt worms clay salt silt powder

  bedrock shale forest corpse oil

  burden beast beauty ferny mass

  turned black depth night soil human

  toil trinkets fish bones clam shells

  midden not wasted topsoil air sun

  photosynthesis over centuries old

  jugs sheaves wheat compacted

  earth ancestor owl dried blood

  magma gravity packed stone water

  flash memory

  grassy knoll water-carved valley

  ice-scratched dip glacial deposit

  pebble sand silt dirt accumulation

  wet accretion wind-blown layer

  packed deep rain sink storm trace

  cloud release catchment tree debris

  root tangle great-great-great-grandmother’s

  hair turned soil protein turned nitrogen

  phosphorus magnesium clay carbon

  history cousin bone disintegration

  beetle rebuild worm transformation

  micro eats macro makes hummock

  grows beans coal extraction burns

  plankton corpses dries groundwater

  rain replenishes as withdrawals

  accelerate competing rates immerse

  and deplete the wonder worms wield

  thin inches of earth skin soil

  on which to perch grow food

  reorganize molecules mastodon

  robin crow bear beaver hide

  buried in transformed by dirt

  millennial dirt eons coexist beneath

  north shore sewage story

  crows party

  at the wastewater treatment plant

  hop, skip, skim the scum

  for meaty delectables

  released from urban drains

  crows swoop

  the bubbling froth

  with the grace of gravity

  one lone monkey puzzle tree

  sits at the lions gate

  witnesses sludge stream

  gas flares

  the huge digesters process

  what we have left behind

  our discards sifted

  chlorinated, pumped out

  into the burrard inlet

  primary treatment

  was built to handle good shit, not

  phthalates & flame retardants

  birth control pills & antidepressants

  morphing fish anatomy

  decreasing sperm counts

  infiltrating fishy homes

  while i long for tertiary rescue

  the crows salvage

  what they can

  from cities industriously pumping out

  chemical consequences

  transgendering water & children

  testing ocean temper

  lupus, a doubled being

  who looked after romulus and remus

  who blossoms in my twin cousins’ bodies

  who teaches the price that “progress” extracts

  from our bodies’ immune systems

  from the seeds of empire

  come the dangerous fruit of empire

  born on wind & wave

  by air & by sea

  tempered by kidneys’ confusion

  filtering the truck of steamships, containers

  precious cargo is double-edged, sore with steady emissions

  stolen from the source, from underground chambers

  taken in industrial mission & precision

  mechanical, predictable, implacable onslaught

  fist grasp? out slips anorexia, pleonexia

  the unrelenting refrain of more, more, more

  can subside or crash on our shores

  the left brain knows but doesn’t believe

  in limits to earth’s skin, the sacred cave’s bonds

  the right brain believes but doesn’t know

  how to stop the lemmings’ fall, mass filicide

  disney-manufactured in white wilderness, alberta

  fiction is flashier than truth, a plastic-signed detour

  exported by pipelines, tankers, digital propaganda

  that forgets & even sells the ground holding it up

  caveat emptor in temporary transaction, transition

  to be shed like a stiff vinyl coat that no longer fits

  & doesn’t breathe. if or when sun-fed cedar

  provides a cleaner home, a quiet trail, once overlooked

  but returned to through cancer’s call, earth’s quake

  a ring of fire that burns through freeways for

  sacrifice or spacious sanctuary

  somewhere, a wild swimming wolf looks on

  We are wet premonition, ferocious spirit waiting for the master’s dams to crack, the inexorable and unrepentant rain, the tidal waves taller than tankers, the vigilant survivors of neoliberal snakepits and slimy advertorials. We are the ones who cannot be bought, the ones who will not sell out, the ones who refuse to be bullied, the damp, trembling ones who feel fear in the face of intimidation tactics and propaganda, yet act or bide our time with courage. We will not drink the patented chemical-laced Kool-Aid because we love the taste of spring tap water. We refuse the leaking plastics and insulting poisons that threaten our beloved rivers and oceans. We are freshwater & saltwater, blood & bone, liver & gall bladder, intestinal fortitude, without borders, without names. We are your very breath, the ancestral memory you inhale and the promises you exhale. We are the protocol of life, the Council of All Beings. We are your mother’s cervix, your cousin’s ulcers, your wake up call after one too many corporate lies insolently or obliviously proclaimed.

  for bing ai

  whose orange tree

  whose window

  whose bedroom

  whose hearth

  submerged beneath

  dam

  three gorges

  dammed

  yangtze

  cursed, hearsed

  unless the baiji return

  whose shack by the side of the road

  resists baseline drift

  who travels an hour by bus

  to reach the empty bank

  who knows the why in wise

  who speaks earth

  through water

  秉愛

  白鱀

  threefold return

  cast into the well that endures blood ambush


  encampments, walled cities, whole empires rise & fall

  the well reclaims the depths, nourishes moon and pig

  the town may be changed, thieves, toil, transitory

  but the well cannot be changed

  architecture inexhaustible, abundance

  wheel gentle, gradual, honest, simple, subtle

  ineffectual, careless, disastrous

  ditches, bent and straightened

  a breaking of the jug

  sudden collapse, neglect

  trigram exhorts organism, grey-haired, broad forehead

  parts co-operate for the benefit of the whole

  swampy lowlands, submerged in mud

  calculated waiting, white of the eye, shifting thigh

  deep heavens in the waters:

  thunderclouds, stumbling horse, wrecked chariot

  odor to the far shore

  dangling, submit to

  apprehension & anticipation

  long, high, advance and retreat,

  in its own time close to the grain

  strength within, danger in front. midwinter pit, chasm.

  strength in the face of danger does not plunge ahead but bides its time

  whereas weakness in the face of danger grows agitated, has not the patience to wait

  perseverance brings good fortune

  it furthers one to cross the great water

  a light will develop out of events

  clouds rise up to heaven: hardwood joyous and of good cheer

  it will rain. we’re ready. persistent, ear*

  * poem generated from found language at http://www.ichingonline.net/

  sunset

  dreaming of a red chamber she is stranded from her blood’s rice paddies spewing sick roses & smokestacks instead of couplets & odes to guava harvest tilapia cultivation pomelo promise the day is as long as the shore of the continent sometimes she cries without knowing which affront in the rampage marketed as progress, or which unstoppable grace powered by the sun, caused it the throat’s fullness, the heart’s hesitation, remind her that intuition is a wild horse struck by constant itch in the invisible night she has never seen waters so clear & lucid before scratch the surface & meridians abound underneath linking foot, ear, heart, liver in the body’s complex orchestra accompanied & enabled by spirochetes & microflora the channels of return are unpredictable they follow the paths of dreamtime that evaporate with sunrise she is held in a moon chamber clouds recharge