Haley Winans

Earth Dumps Humanity

You’re so brave and selfless:
the way you recycle
pizza boxes, refuse straws
for your mocktail at gentrified
dive bars, bike to Fresh
Market with your dad’s credit
card, go vegan in the heart
of a food desert, stay
tapeworming my soft
tissue of wealthy-preserved
greenswards and duck ponds. 

You motor-throat my name
like hard metal
elegy. You’re a hot January
day ornate with the premature fur
of cherry blossoms stippling
the skyline: a blinding
beautiful pastoral of red flags. You loved
to get a rise out of me; watch me
blush climate maps or heat waves or eat a family 

of polar bears like a Ziploc bag of trail
mix while a cricket sound
machine and my tidal sweeps
of fingertips lull you
to sleep. But you and I—we’re Pangea
babe. Broken
up and never shifting back
together till you’re buried
in me. You think you can gaslight
a geo-queen? You pretend you’re a man-
o-war booze-cruising my currents
but you’re just a plastic
bag. All float, no sting.

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Haley Winans is a garden-lover and bunny mom from Annapolis, Maryland. She has poetry published in Slipstream, The Shore Poetry, Breakwater Review, Folio Literary Journal, Minnesota Review and elsewhere. She just graduated from the University of Memphis MFA Creative Writing program. She's a founding co-editor of Beaver Magazine. In undergrad, she studied Environmental Studies and Creative Writing, with a hyper-focus on environmental justice, sustainable agriculture and poetry. Twitter: winans_haley