Global Emissions Rose into the Atmosphere like Emissions Rising into the Atmosphere by Chris Watkins

"I give up on metaphor and simile."

Global Emissions Rose into the Atmosphere like Emissions Rising into the 
Atmosphere
by Chris Watkins

                 after torrin greathouse after Ilya Kaminsky after Pablo Neruda

I give up on metaphor and simile. 
The fish hawk did not fly like a coat hanger 
on which to drape my grievances,
but like a fish hawk. 
And her cry was not a thorn 
like those pounded into Christ’s head,
but the ordinary cry of a fish hawk
with nothing in it of forgiveness.
And mullet swam in schools
beneath her shadow not like 
our collective imagination for reducing 
the warming of the planet,
but like a school of mullet.
Crude oil spilled into the Gulf, 
and it was not the dipping of day
into darkness, but crude oil
spilling into water, and turtles
ate of it because it appeared like jellyfish,
but it was not jellyfish,
and the turtles were overcome 
with bleeding and with ulcers.
And the ulcers were not like a red spot on the surface
of Mars, but like ulcers on the lining of the stomach. 
And the gas tank in my car was not 
like the lining of a stomach, but like a gas tank
that I continued to fill.
And global emissions did not rise into the atmosphere
like prayers rising toward heaven,
but like emissions rising into the atmosphere.
And even hearing it in plain speech,
without symbol or the fruiting bodies of language,
I still cannot bring myself to understand 
what we are doing.

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