Emily Alexander

Earth Day

all my friends are beaming online sun

draped across cheekbones among

other things their brightness fills me

with envy I am commonly tiny

staring at trees sky more trees

for whole seconds without thinking

how the Amazon is approaching

what they call a death spiral

and may well be a broken-down savanna

by the time I get a real job

it’s no fun anymore to press flowers

in fat books or gallop through the yard

this one bird has it backwards

and will not shut up here in the opposite

of morning I was telling myself

a bedtime story that became a one-sided

argument for why the jokes about women

and beer and one about bears I heard

in the front row were not funny

I admit I felt bad not laughing

time traveling instead to the tents

of my youth zipped up and afraid

of a lumbering just beyond if my sister

were here she’d know what to do

she’d say shh the trees forgive you

for being born and hating camping no

ha ha ha she’d be like what

are you talking about calm down