Blackout

By Paromita Talukder

This poem is a climate change activism piece that follows Mother Nature’s crystalized tears as they pelt down on Earth, causing a blackout in a hospital where a guilt-ridden man awaits death.

the manifestation of mother nature’s sorrow
thunders across the sky as her beads of tears
	coagulate,
	turn to slivers, 
		firing
pricks on her own membrane.
Each shell plotting
a revenge,
in hopes that a civil war 
may transpire 
once they strike the ground–a blizzard.
a battle 
	between
 		progeny.
The storm wreaks havoc,
plundering, pillaging, pulverizing.
a perpetual game 
of mimicry 
	between 
		posterity.

It is a pain strong enough to pick oneself apart, 
chewing one tooth at a time, carving out one eye-ball at a time,
stretching apart the bellybutton to take a peek
at what your body is doing to itself.
A rancid boiling of stomach acid, gurgling
up pipes and down cavities, cooks
tender flesh until there’s nothing left to suck on but bones.
Bones that are used, by the womb, like skinned sticks and branches
to light a fire that cremates the womb–by the womb.
The apoptosis of an organism.

All the while–a man lies covered in sheets as white
as the fossilized fluids outside.
I will die of natural causes, he thinks,
as he remembers sucking the sap
from the fathomless flesh of the Earth. 
Rocks he turned to oil 
turned to gas 
turned to asthma.
I will die of natural causes, he thinks,
as his body sips blood from a bag,
and white and blue rubber ribbons bolt
to a screen display the electricity
coursing through his body.
I will die of natural causes, he thinks, 
as the bullets of the storm outside sink 
into power lines and encase, flood,
man-made generators of energy.
I will die of natural causes, he thinks, 
as he seeps into darkness, 
the whirring of machines goes mute
and the pumping of blood and air
from plastic bags 
rests.

Perpetrators turned bystanders–
dependence for 
	wealth 
turned dependence for 
	survival–
grants no exoneration.
Blame is a burden
staining the shadow
that follows the soul
through reincarnation. 

Girls Write Now On the Other Side of Everything: The 2023 Anthology

Do you know what it’s like to communicate with your family across a salty ocean’s divide? Do you want the sun and moon to enter your home with stories written in embers? Do you seek voices that will punctuate the darkness? Welcome to the other side of everything. It’s the other side of silence, the other side of childhood, the other side of hate, the other side of indifference, it’s the other side of sides, where the binary breaks down. It’s a new paradigm, a destination, a different perspective, a mindset, a state of openness, the space between the endless folds in your forehead, hopes for tomorrow, and reflections on the past. This anthology of diverse voices is an everything bagel of literary genres and love songs, secrets whispered in the dark of night, conversations held with ancestors under the sea. 

READ ON THE OTHER SIDE

VISIT ANTHOLOGY LIBRARY

Process

I was inspired to write this piece after learning in my AP Environmental class about power outages and how they affect hospitals that rely on electricity to sustain patients. I read various climate activism poems to gain inspiration for imagery and learn about the real-world damages of global warming. Many of the poems I read also explored topics outside of climate change such as Ocean Vuong’s “Essay on Craft” which I used as inspiration for themes seen in this poem surrounding birth-giving and motherhood. Many of the techniques I used to develop the imagery were methods I learned in Girls Write Now’s poetry workshops as well as my creative writing class in school. Though the idea for this piece was fun to execute, it was a gut-wrenching process as I delved into how I would feel if my body was torn apart and burnt as our planet has been for decades. Working on this piece was truly an emotionally creative journey.