Image/ine “awhile” as a red thread. Tie “awhile” to a sewing needle. Go to the nearest fracking site and wait for a rainstorm. If you are white-bodied presenting mainstream gender binaries, when it rains, lay your body upon the ground parallel to the drilled tunnel filled with water and an undisclosed mixture of chemicals. Catch a raindrop on the needle’s tip then sew the polluted rain water in circles around your other wrist. Repeat, sewing the rain’s pollution to your body’s cellular pollution, to the surface of the polluted earth at the fracking site. As you fully embody pollution, conduct a word replacement on a poem of your own, replacing each noun with “oil” or “money,” and each verb with “disrupt”
Author Bio: J.M. Miller is a queer/trans/human poet whose poetry collection, Wilderness Lessons, was called a love letter to the planet. They teach creative writing at the University of Washington Tacoma and live with their family in Seattle. Please check out jm-poet.com.
