Soot's Playground — Peatsmoke

This is no poem, because the poem you seek suffocates under the pillow of the domo above our houses, above our trees, above our roads, above our people. Every morning, billows from pots of oil and flares of gas pirouette into this domo & grip our air by the scruff of the neck, spreading fangs across the sky to gouge out the eyes of our sun and the globe of our moon. We trace oxygen like a biofact and oxides tell us where to breathe so they’d perforate our lungs and make us dread sneezing into tissue. We leave in white and return in dye, drink water and piss petrol. We arrest ourselves in our homes and hunger leads the prison break to the market where ruined surfaces and closed shops and flaming sellers chase us back with exorbitant prices and spits of gunge. Goo swims in our rivers while fishes float. Nowadays, the heavens fade like a distant memory. No egrets spread wings of journey, no kites angle back in flight, no squirrels chitter up and down our oil palms. They say we should cry but what voice is loud when ears are shut? What lug moves when pushed with the tongue? There is a condensation in that domo forming from these vapors of silence. What if the first drop from it means the dwellers becoming brands of Vantablack? What if the second means the last rickety bus evacuating the last wheeze? What if the third means archaeologists coming to study the vestiges of the fallen? What if the last means the charms of our dexterity glowing in eyes of tourists like the moai of the Rapa Nui?

About the Author

Chiemeziem Everest Udochukwu’s works appear on Lolwe, Second Chance Lit, Salamander Ink, Kalahari Review, Eboquills, Fiction Niche, and elsewhere. He is a first-class graduate in Linguistics/Igbo and was a finalist for the Quramo Writers’ Prize 2019 and the Nigerian NewsDirect Poetry Prize 2020. He writes from Awka, Nigeria.

About the ARTIST

Based in Borrego Springs California, artist Robin Young works in mixed media focusing on collage and contemporary art making. Her focus on collage art using magazine clippings, photos, masking tape, wallpaper, jewelry, feathers, foil etc. allows her to develop deep into the whimsical and intuitive. Repurposing nostalgic images for lighthearted and sometimes disquieting messages; Robin’s artistic universe is strange, funky, sometimes perverse and always alluring. Robin lives in the California desert with her creative husband John and lazy dog Comet.