Meghan Sterling | Upon Hearing the U.N.’s Report that 1 Million Animal and Plant Species are At Risk of Extinction Due to Climate Change and Human Activity | Poets Resist

Meghan Sterling’s work has been published in Driftwood Press, lingerpost, the Chronogram, red paint hill, Balancing Act, Sandy River Review, Sky Island Journal and many others. Her chapbook, How We Drift, was published by Blue Lyra Press in the Fall of 2016. Meghan will be attending a residency at Hewnoaks Artists’ Colony in September, 2019.

Meghan Sterling’s Website.

Also by Meghan Sterling: Borough Bird Waves Like Breath

Poets Resist
Edited by Jemshed Khan
May 9, 2019

Meghan Sterling

Upon Hearing the U.N.’s Report that 1 Million Animal and Plant Species are At Risk of Extinction Due to Climate Change and Human Activity

Winter ends sooner, and the grass never fills in the front yard, decorated now with small brown rings like a pox. After nights of heavy sky and heat cows and dogs bow low as if weather carried weight. We watch our daughter, painted white with zinc, tumble in rough grass, make-believe she is a crow and laugh up at the dying trees, pretend now she is a squirrel- a vague memory of Squirrel Nutkin or some story- and laugh into the silence, an echo. She keeps herself busy, gathers and piles copper oak leaves, threading them together in the crumbling crown she places on my head.