ALT Eating Poetry by Mark Strand Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad and she walks with her hands in her dress. The poems are gone. The light is dim. The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up. Their eyeballs roll, their blond legs burn like brush. The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep. She does not understand. When I get on my knees and lick her hand, she screams. I am a new man. I snarl at her and bark. I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
ALT Love in a Time of Climate Change by Craig Santos Perez I don't love you as if you were rare earth metals, conflict diamonds, or reserves of crude oil that cause war. I love you as one loves the most vulnerable species : urgently, between the habitat and its loss. I love you as one loves the last seed saved within a vault, gestating the heritage of our roots, and thanks to your body, the taste that ripens from its fruit still lives sweetly on my tongue. I love you without knowing how or when this world will end. I love you organically, without pesticides. I love you like this because we'll only survive in the nitrogen rich compost of our embrace, so close that your emissions of carbon are mine, so close that your sea rises with my heat.
