Voting in the Time of Climate Change

By Ying Wu

 

The tide swallows most of the beach these days.
Sunbathers take refuge in the reeds.
And children wade in the new lagoons
that stretch across the soft, loose sand.
Our poles are melting.
The bay spills over the sidewalk sometimes
and breaches the steps of private homes.

Today, in Texas, voters spill down the sidewalk too.
Six-hour lines in Georgia.
Our world is changing.
Queues before dawn in Tennessee.
Crumbling ice shelves in Antarctica.
Thwaites Glacier has destabilized.
Voters defy the rain in Philadelphia.
Lines in Ohio reach the interstate.
Voters a quarter mile deep form a double wrap in Brooklyn.
The sea is rising.
We are the People.
Our tide is sweeping in.

 


Ying Wu, a poetry editor at Writers Resist, is a poet and cognitive scientist, and host of the Gelato Poetry reading series in San Diego (meetup.com/BrokenAnchorPoetry). She is also a proud member of the editorial team of Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual. More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry and Art at the San Diego Art Institute (poetryandartsd.com), in the Serving House Journal, and in Writers Resist, as well as in the material world at the San Diego Airport and in print journals, such as the Clackamas Literary Review.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Welcome Ying Wu, poetry editor

Ying WuWe are delighted to introduce our new editor, Ying Wu, who is joining editor Laura Orem in the Writers Resist world of poetry.

Ying Wu is a poet and cognitive scientist, and host of the Gelato Poetry reading series in San Diego (meetup.com/BrokenAnchorPoetry). She is also a proud member of the editorial team of Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual. More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry and Art at the San Diego Art Institute (poetryandartsd.com), in the Serving House Journal (servinghousejournal.com), and in Writers Resist, as well as in the material world at the San Diego Airport and in print journals, such as the Clackamas Literary Review. Ying currently studies insight and problem solving (insight.ucsd.edu) at UC San Diego and lives with her husband and daughter on a sailboat in the San Diego Bay.

Please join us in welcoming Ying Wu and celebrating her poem— 

We

breathe the air

name stars

snap photographs

count minutes, kilometers
degrees, Ohms, inches
Herz, decibels, terrabytes
millivolts, microns, pounds

notice
when
the clouds
are turning pink

or thick
and smooth
like blankets

or high
and thin
in rippled wisps

believe
in heaven

speak in
metaphor

speak in
grammar

talk about
infinity

stretch our
hands wide.