in other news (2020)

by Sophie Klahr — Wed, 19 May 2021 07:01:32 +0000

someone ate a bat, they say—that’s how it happened
photographs of empty rush hours empty vegas empty beaches

fake news of swans and dolphins in venice canals
true news of long-horned goats sprawling through small towns

this is not like last year when starving polar bears reeled ice-lost and half-blind
to scavenge dustbins in ittoqqortoormilt

an article claims with so many home-bound by the pandemic
scientists suddenly are better able to hear the earth

fires pour through trees and fields and towns for days
and miles and miles and a boy who went back home

to rescue his dog and his grandmother is found in the driver’s seat of a car
with the dog draped over both their bodies dead

across three days just before last christmas
around four thousand and five hundred flying foxes fell in a heat-wave

some we get to in time says a volunteer rescuer others die in your hands

a woman rips away her shirt to wrap in linen a darkly seared koala
and tv outlets run this as good news

more shaky footage a young man running
on a shoulder near the flames and the rabbit he catches

leaping from the burning bush

yesterday from six feet away my neighbor tells me
how walking in our neighborhood

he found a pear tree and ate from it
the warmest pear he says

my skin has not been touched
in seven months

I dream that night
he asks me to walk with him

wouldn’t you rather walk with me? he says
though nothing else has been offered

heavy rain presses a flock of black-eyed susans
down and back together

outside the frame of my bedroom window
I see the sky white behind the pines

and there is
no particular end

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in other news (2020)