Kunjana Parashar
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Kunjana Parashar (she/her) is a poet from Mumbai. She holds an MA in English Literature from Mumbai University. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Lammergeier, UCity Review, The Hellebore, Riggwelter, Camwood Literary Magazine, The Rumpus (ENOUGH Section), and elsewhere.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wolfwasp |
Love in the Time of Climate Catastrophes
We have some time before the permafrost all melts: stay.
I know the smog will make apparitions of our unborn child and
the lantana will try to take root from the cleave of our thighs.
But until the adjutants still have our bones to eat, won’t you stay?
Forget how we couldn’t help the electrocuted bodies of bustards
lying on dusty field roads, forget our loss of language for that
special grief reserved for bird-deaths. That dark night when the burnt
smells of brown plumages filled our dreams and we kept sweating.
So what if we can’t hear birdsong again – look how the inky-blue
grandalas sing from your collarbone still, how constant their wingspan
on the landscape of your neck – like the only music we need.
And look how from the pipes, the moray eels enter our kitchen like
swimming in a calm tidepool. We will go that way too – sea fans
escaping the palms of our cold, wet hands – us – ebbing and ebbing.
I know the smog will make apparitions of our unborn child and
the lantana will try to take root from the cleave of our thighs.
But until the adjutants still have our bones to eat, won’t you stay?
Forget how we couldn’t help the electrocuted bodies of bustards
lying on dusty field roads, forget our loss of language for that
special grief reserved for bird-deaths. That dark night when the burnt
smells of brown plumages filled our dreams and we kept sweating.
So what if we can’t hear birdsong again – look how the inky-blue
grandalas sing from your collarbone still, how constant their wingspan
on the landscape of your neck – like the only music we need.
And look how from the pipes, the moray eels enter our kitchen like
swimming in a calm tidepool. We will go that way too – sea fans
escaping the palms of our cold, wet hands – us – ebbing and ebbing.
Commentary
Kunjana on "Love in the Time of Climate Catastrophes":
I think the first time this poem started taking shape in my mind was when I read about the state of Greater Adjutants in Assam, the bone-swallowers, or hargila, as they are locally called (Source: RoundGlass Sustain). These are large birds with impressively-sized bills that can often be found foraging at landfills and waste-dumping sites. They carry out the same kind of ecological cleansing functions as vultures, but are actually storks. Greater adjutants are endangered due to loss of wetlands and more importantly, due to contaminated and toxic waste that makes its way to their insides. It astounds me how much wreckage we can cause to an entire species because of our negligent and anthropocentric practices. Besides my own tendency to catastrophize, Love in the Time of Climate Catastrophes was forged out of this pain of being so short-sighted about climate change, species extinction, and, of one day causing so much irreversible damage to everything around us that we’ll be left with nothing but memories of birdsong.
That being said, my intention behind writing this poem was not only to report our current and possibly future ecological realities but also to jar our anaesthetic senses into action. Love is like a sweet, anodyne drug. It lulls and comforts us. I wanted to bring about the discomfiting effect of contrast between this ecstatic pull of love and the urgency of climate disasters staring in the face of two lovers. I imagine that when the world is falling apart, lovers will not share memories of romantic escapades in the mountains – instead they will recount the horrors of trying to protect all manifestations of life but being too small to effect any substantial change, might choose resignation over action. The bleakness of this perspective is perhaps made to seem lighter by the lyrical and lilting structure of a love song – but it is impossible for the lovers to not be aware of the tenuousness of everything – like the moray eels and sea fans now invading their home, the trauma of climate disaster just slips in.
Editor-in-Chief Christine Taylor on "Love in the Time of Climate Catastrophes":
I was immediately drawn by the title’s calling on Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera and wanted to see how the poem would potentially play off this reference. But after the first two stanzas, I pushed aside all thought of the novel because the poem begs the reader to consider our role in climate change. How can we continue loving when quite literally the physical world is falling apart around us? I love the immediate, sensory details in this poem like “the electrocuted bodies of bustards / lying on dusty field roads,” and aesthetically the poem has a beautiful rhythm and musicality. The beauty of the poem is almost a slap in the face as the content reminds us that environmental collapse is now our reality.
I think the first time this poem started taking shape in my mind was when I read about the state of Greater Adjutants in Assam, the bone-swallowers, or hargila, as they are locally called (Source: RoundGlass Sustain). These are large birds with impressively-sized bills that can often be found foraging at landfills and waste-dumping sites. They carry out the same kind of ecological cleansing functions as vultures, but are actually storks. Greater adjutants are endangered due to loss of wetlands and more importantly, due to contaminated and toxic waste that makes its way to their insides. It astounds me how much wreckage we can cause to an entire species because of our negligent and anthropocentric practices. Besides my own tendency to catastrophize, Love in the Time of Climate Catastrophes was forged out of this pain of being so short-sighted about climate change, species extinction, and, of one day causing so much irreversible damage to everything around us that we’ll be left with nothing but memories of birdsong.
That being said, my intention behind writing this poem was not only to report our current and possibly future ecological realities but also to jar our anaesthetic senses into action. Love is like a sweet, anodyne drug. It lulls and comforts us. I wanted to bring about the discomfiting effect of contrast between this ecstatic pull of love and the urgency of climate disasters staring in the face of two lovers. I imagine that when the world is falling apart, lovers will not share memories of romantic escapades in the mountains – instead they will recount the horrors of trying to protect all manifestations of life but being too small to effect any substantial change, might choose resignation over action. The bleakness of this perspective is perhaps made to seem lighter by the lyrical and lilting structure of a love song – but it is impossible for the lovers to not be aware of the tenuousness of everything – like the moray eels and sea fans now invading their home, the trauma of climate disaster just slips in.
Editor-in-Chief Christine Taylor on "Love in the Time of Climate Catastrophes":
I was immediately drawn by the title’s calling on Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera and wanted to see how the poem would potentially play off this reference. But after the first two stanzas, I pushed aside all thought of the novel because the poem begs the reader to consider our role in climate change. How can we continue loving when quite literally the physical world is falling apart around us? I love the immediate, sensory details in this poem like “the electrocuted bodies of bustards / lying on dusty field roads,” and aesthetically the poem has a beautiful rhythm and musicality. The beauty of the poem is almost a slap in the face as the content reminds us that environmental collapse is now our reality.
