Tag: environment

Cop O The North, by Cáit O’Neill McCullagh


By Robert Garnham

Cop O The North

After Nicanor Parra’s ‘The Poems of the Pope’

Insta this! I’ve been crowned!
I’m the COP o the north
King of the Anthropocene
every ‘ancestor’s wildest dream’

Oh, I’ve suffered decades of your resolutions
deny me no more, Anthro’s here darlings!
and petro-chemical green’s my scene
my cloak is all COP-washed glory

the forests burn, the earth expires
the sea’s an acid-gasp! It’s oil thanks to me!
I’ve anointed this planet in fire and flood
and folks while I rule it, you’ll consume it

We’ve peaked post-truth, BTW
my people write the scripts now
this one’s called ‘Beyond Petroleum
from filthy lucre to carbon-blue’

flush with the glow of burning ozone
I’m the green god now
I grace every couch on your blessed telly
but never admit, it’s fossil fuel that keeps me lit!

I can get you what you want today, no probs.
But tomorrow, things go nuclear
and I know where the button is
and I know the folk who want to press it.

Ever since our story started
when you pushed that first hungry plough
and took your axe to the lungs of the forest
Gaia has groaned to birth me.

So, bless her do your mother earth
perhaps one less flight will heal her extinction
but remember, while the crude keeps bubbling
it’ll be me who’ll be your final benediction

Cáit O’Neill McCullagh is a straying ethnologist writing at home in the Highlands of Scotland. She started to write poetry in December 2020, and since then her poems have appeared in Northwords Now, Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis, Drawn to the Light, and The Banyan Review. Cáit tweets at @kittyjmac .

 

Earthworms are Awesome, by Holly Conant


By Robert Garnham

Earthworms Are Awesome

I mean, they literally feed the fucking planet. Take our fermented banana, yellow miasma and crap it out as wise-man’s gold. And I feel impressed with my morning turd! But that needs hours of processing, by loads of people in hazmat suits with fancy gizmos, before it turns into anything useful. I’d rather be a worm: take a shit, and boom, job done; it’s warm and ready to be laid into by a seed-bean or bulb. Maybe I’d be more fulfilled without a human brain to contradict my purpose. I’d find my way into a middle-class compost bin, spend all day eating potpourri detritus, and be a rent-free master architect, redacting common land law. I’d be humbled by my legless body, my simple ways of building, mindful of camber structure instead of grey velvet sofas and Mrs Hinch. I’d be at home in dirt, throw my gender away and bag the kinky night-time rendezvous’ amongst an orgy of grass with wet breath. The human hand would be no more risk to me than it is now, maybe even less, and mother Earth might forgive me for my flesh. I just hope being swallowed by a bird is a quick death.

Holly is a mature student currently studying at the University of Leeds. Her poems have been published since January 2021 by Ink, Sweat & Tears, Anti-Heroin Chic, Spilling Cocoa Over Martin Amis, Dreich and more, as well as appearing in anthologies. She is currently working on her debut collection.

Twitter: @Holly_C_Writer