Emily Hockaday – Writers Resist

The first day of cherry season,

By Emily Hockaday

the sky becomes apocalyptic. The air is
wool in my throat. I wear a mask to pick
my daughter up from school. The fruit vendors
sit next to their colorful carts like the world
isn’t ending, and I suppose it isn’t for now
or it is just very slowly. And what did
the vendors do at Pompeii? Skewer meat
and sling it under an eerie sky. I bring home
3 lbs of the jeweled fruits. The sun
is the same bright pink behind the haze—
a Rainier cherry hanging above us.
My daughter is studying wildfires
at school, or perhaps just the lifecycles
of trees. She tells me forest fires can be good
for the Earth, right? Because redwood seeds
need fire to grow. Our hallway smells
of smoke from the skylight. We move inside
a yellow cloud. Even as the air quality
outside becomes a disaster, we make plans
to cap our stove’s gas line. I think of
my daughter’s new pink lungs.
I was reckless with mine, but hers
are pristine, and I want to preserve them.
I imagine her serotinous redwood cones
cracking in the heat. I hope that’s
what humanity will do too. Crack
so that seeds release. At night
I roll a towel against her window.
The fires can only burn for so long.

Emily Hockaday’s second collection, In a Body, an ecopoetry collection with themes of parenting, chronic illness, and grief, is coming out in October 2023 with Harbor Editions. Her debut, Naming the Ghost, was released with Cornerstone Press in 2022. She has received grants from the City Artists Corp, Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation, the De Groot Foundation, and the NYFA Queens Art Fund. She is a fellow with the Office Hours Poetry workshop and was a 2022 resident at Bethany Arts Community.

Photo credit: Denise Kitagawa via a Creative Commons license.

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Body Before Extinction

By Emily Hockaday

I sing to the water and lower my only child
into the foam, wiggling toes first. I think about
all the species the ocean held
that I don’t know the names of
that have gone extinct this past year
and focus on the sound of the waves
and all the metaphors
that the tide could cover.

I have walked this beach
and pulled balloons, broken bottles,
cracked plastic, and wristwatches
from the surf and dunes
without seeing another person
for miles. I listen for the wind
through the beach grass and
the plover and seagulls
and hand my daughter a trash bag
and gloves. I don’t even know how many
animals are left. I am afraid
to look for the answer.

Emily Hockaday’s first full-length collection Naming the Ghost is out with Cornerstone Press November 2022. She is the author of five prior chapbooks, most recently Beach Vocabulary from Red Bird Chaps. Her work has appeared in print and online journals, as well as the Wayfinding, Poets of Queens, and In Isolation anthologies. She can be found on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com and on Twitter @E_Hockaday.

Photograph by Aryeh Alex via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.