The Ground Beneath Our Feet

Dear Reader, Welcome to The Ground Beneath Our Feet—a digital collection of poems on climate justice by young writers involved with Just Buffalo's Writing Center. This collection was made in collaboration with Ujima Company's Dunbar Youth Theatre Arts Program as part of the Water in the Desert Project. Dunbar young performers selected some of the pieces featured here to present in a moving performance they gave in June of 2022.

We hope these pieces rattle you—with their heartbreak and love song, with their rage and despair, with their blunt edges and tender linings.

At the end of the collection are a series of writing & artmaking prompts. As Elle so crucially asks in her poem "Tree Hugging," read this collection and tell us "what would you do for the love of your life?"

—Just Buffalo Writing Center

Dunbar artist M!LL!EE RAEE performs "Tree Hugging" by Elle Bader-Gregory at the 2022 Water in the Desert performance.

on death, planets, and verbiage Marie McGuff-Zelaya

it is a matter of carbon. cremation? i had asked. and the answer was a burning — like all gerunds, infinite. untethered. like seven thousand people drowned in their own salted breath in uttar pradesh. like the gleaming tongue of the furnace door shutting. it is a matter of knowing what came before. of stringing tragedies like data points or an iv: fissured body, shell of mantle fracked and filled with nitro and air, hurricanes sitting electric and lurid over drained islands white as plaque.

and of course i do not want to. of course i am sick of gerunds. i want instead to fall into the bright imagining of the dead smiling, the planet adaptable. of the petroleum glow of afternoon sun, teeth pure as bleached coral. of God speaking to adam in the breezy part of the day. of eternity locked safely in every living thing.

hot girl summer danny merlino

my youth is climbing out of a hole with weights on her ankles and blood on her face she holds on to what the world used to be a warm embrace from mother, but now she’s sick and small and she feels evil for breathing for buying a coffee for driving her 2010 toyota matrix daily for existing in a world that didn’t ask for her

Tomorrow Zelda

Blood trickles from cuts on your feet and pools in the mud of the field Dust, kicked up behind you, flies in swirls Fog, hazy and thick with smoke, clogs your nose and blisters your throat No longer can you call the sky cerulean or sapphire or cobalt or blue Regret and shame and remorse have no effect your indifference has done its job Carcasses of animals so crushed by tires that they are indistinguishable from the mire Littering the ground like leaves The smell of burning rubber stews with egregious odors of rot and decay Chemicals and corpses and sweat all baking away in the heat Silence stretches for miles, filling every crevice it can find with its odious voice You didn’t even try Instead you ran, as far as your burning lungs would take you To the fields of tomorrow But you can’t escape to this place A world so mutilated and mauled it's unrecognizable

3300 Haya E.

“Mother, what’s that?”

“That’s green my dear.”

“No, that thing, the weird tufts coming out of it.”

“That’s a tree.”

“A three of what?”

“No, a tree, a type of plant, not the number.”

“What’s a plant?”

“Something we burned until it dissolved, crushed until it broke, ground until the particles, swallowed us whole.

Now we’re too consumed in the memories, too torn apart by regret. trapped in tiny little cages.

Mother Nature predicted the bet.”

“Who’s Mother Nature? What was the bet?”

“She’s the bones and heart, the air, the water, that tree, and all the others. The bet was a gamble, a foolish one played by oil-spilling heroes, and mindlessly driving souls.

We lost that gamble, yes, but no one wins in war.”

“What happened?”

“We killed her, a slow, agonizing death, a suicidal mission, because tearing at her, tore us apart.

We stole the ground beneath our feet.

Too foolish, Too stupid, Too lost in promises of the future.

We let the glaciers melt. (“what are those?”)

We let the fires join in on our feast.

We let the mountains sob in agony, as we tore everything apart at their feet.”

“Ma, you’re not making sense.

Why would you destroy hearts and bones?”

“Because we could, and that was all the excuse we needed.”

“But Ma, don’t hearts and bones give you life?”

“That’s enough, my dear, countless voices had already shouted those words before. You wouldn’t be the first.

You wouldn’t be the last. But it’s far too late, and the ground is numb now.”

Blue 2050 L. Hartpence

A smack of jellyfish swim with their twin, plastic, both colourful, undestroyable, thousand year survivors— and above their blue world I tread water, water’s never far from me, already at my chest in 2050, and my family— I held the children made of bleached coral, I hunted the dissipating mirages made of coal and oil, I rioted with the masks made of factory flesh fuming and burning the barons of Hell— but all sank, without their treasure, treading water is now my own, a green world I wish to know—

jellyfish, my family is dead, how do I survive, I watch the blue’s devouring of the green world and it leaves your sister plastic only— sinful things my family’s ninth symphony only— jellyfish, let me be your other twin, let me survive and find the green world in the stomach of the blue, I promise you, jellyfish, the green world will be rescued.

Help Save Mother Earth Leandra (Lele) Bell

Did you know planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old?

Majestic, captivating, enchanting, and oxygen-rich.

Mother Earth is truly authentic.

We took her beauty for granted and look at what we've done.

Deforestation, pollution, we must come up with a solution!

But no, we voluntarily covered our ears to mother nature's screams, And covered our eyes to all her help-wanted signs.

To every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction.

As a result, we witness stronger tornadoes, volcanoes erupting, More wildfires than ever before, deforestation caused by increasing pollution.

All of this is caused by us.

These problems are symptoms of us, byproducts of us But they have misjudged mother nature's strength.

We cannot permit our history to be written by the wicked, greedy, and loony It is our duty to protect mother nature from those who refuse to see her beauty.

Species that have been here longer than us will be gone because of us.

We've been given so much, The only planet in this Solar System with life.

We are one in a million, Goldilocks said it best we are just right.

But when enough people come together, we will make waves And watch the world in a new era filled with passion and harmony, liberty for all But it is up to you to make the effort because time is of the essence.

Recitation Sophie Zhu

Verbs rolled off the tongue like thunder The man in his wool coat still as a droplet of sunlight All my bootprints hushed under bottlecaps A creature slathered in smog like meat The telephone static of honeybees Your father’s forgotten cigarette butt This life rushed into this body as if spilt The way the lonely leak into this city like wind Little messiahs of plastic Skyscrapers slouching in Killing it killing it killing it killing— Shards of flesh pieced into a video game of skin The springtime jazz of his engine smoke crunching my footprints The heart a well-rusted machine Spring flowers blushing into apples The tax form of a white bud

The flame retardant of Agent Orange Because the screen’s pixels are stuck in loveliness A spray of blossoms stamped out by ash The Redwood a spaceship of sticky flesh How many children we carve a womb for To crawl into the shadow of a scar

Tree Hugging Elle Bader-Gregory

I wonder if we’ve all had the same dream: standing atop a cliff overlooking the sea, while the wind whips and waves crash in a chorus of unknown voices.

Did you sprout wings as well? Hollow bones? Fly away? Let the huffing and puffing wind chart your course? Tell me, when did you awake?

Where do you go when you need to get out — of the office, of the city, of your body — when the birds and bees in your chest start fluttering about for freedom?

I stop cursing gravity and find the nearest woodland because trees teach good posture, among other things.

These days it can be hard to find a forest, so a singular flower or tree can do, anything with enough force that you can comfortably sit in its orbit.

I want to be a Willow that dances in violent rainstorms.

I want to be a Marigold that can bend without breaking.

I want to be a Maple, she whose leaves change color with grace, and lean into the shifting of seasons.

Will you do this till you are breathless? Till your chest is burbling with giggles and overflowing with love?

It's no wonder we are such romantics, living in a world like this.

Tell me, what would you do for the love of your life?

I think you're just not listening Abuk Aleu

I saw a bird take flight today her wings; mimicked patterns of the ocean’s currents her being; fondled by the wind Almost as if they were kin, like if I were to pluck every feather from her fragile body I’d see the natural world wince Just as last year's oil spill suffocating too many fins too many ingested bottles and tins too much digging at the earth's wounds as if she doesn’t have a skin And I’ve seen three winters each at slightly different winds Slowly melting and we’re just warming each one with vastly different but connected primal sins Welting the earth faster than she can generate our very own oxygen And it’s easy to sit on our demise Wait until the next generation Must pay for all our crimes Blood, Sweat, and tears Multimillion-dollar industries racking up dimes Manufacturing a distance between accountability and where we lie And in this case listening can not be choice but what drives one to rise

Enabling a feeling worth more than one can buy Fear to mend a very costly divide And only in this time may we tend to earth's cries

Wake Up Mia Kirisits

Soil is supposed to be soft.

A rich, deep brown that reminds you of the chocolate you used to devour as a child.

We are not children anymore.

Now we see the faults, the cracks in our world.

The soil is hardening, drying, being carried away by the breeze of despair.

Hope is like a light, small, dimming, dying slowly, taking its last few shallow breaths at the end of the tunnel.

Hope is our sun, beaming down on the drying Earth, coaxing life to sprout out of seeds. Like the sun, hope can be lost, blocked by the clouds as the once bright colors begin to bleed from our vision.

Like wearing blinders, we begin to see in only grayscale.

Our world becomes bleak, mundane and we start to lose sight of what’s important.

We would not be here without the resources we have been provided.

We are lucky enough to have fresh water, soil we can grow food with.

Once we realize that we must be our own saviors,

that no ethereal being is going to drop from the heavens above and save us all, the clouds begin to part.

We lose our blinders and begin to see the colors, the light at the end of our tunnel brightens, ever so slightly.

Our world is dying, this is the end according to some, or should this be seen as less of an end and more of a new beginning?

We have seen the fault in our ways, so now we can begin to rebuild, even if rebuilding means tearing down old buildings.

The buildings that may appear to be strong, stable, reliable, they are crumbling each other.

They have become each other’s downfall.

The smog that pumps out of one kills another, the vicious circle continuing to spiral out of control like a hurricane destroying everything in its path.

So let this be our siren, our raging alarm that will wake us out of our hypnosis so we can bring about the change we so desperately need.

Wake up. Wake up.

Gasoline Hands Jonah Ruddock

The tokamaks retch in disarray, perverted stars pieced together from the earth. He doesn’t know how the world got so slick. He grew up in a gas station four generations deep, in the hiss and snarl of nozzles at feeding time, with benzene rifling through his bones and the smell of exhaust always on his hands, in the creases of his neck, in between his teeth, in the bitter reek of his father's embrace in the years before cancer started rearranging his blood. It wasn’t perfect, but it was there and seemed it would be forever. Whatever harm it brought came like family, like rain: it was a language nobody had to be taught.

[Gasoline’s pallor pooling thick & languorous over memory.]

The highway used to thrum, the cars wailing their speed, the driveways singing with the ragged bass of trucks waking up to themselves. Big sweating beasts, back when you could still hear them coming. They were hungrier then. Dirtier. Less polite. Before they turned quiet and knowing, before they lined up in the streets so silently he could’ve sworn they were a crowd of animals just waiting for something to happen. Like they could wait forever. Until their poisonous hearts gave out. He reckons this new energy is a matter of survival, just one kind of blood for another, but the new blood comes from reactors that show you nothing

but their laboring breath. The new blood, you can’t touch it. It doesn’t have teeth. It didn’t come from anything that was ever alive once.

[Progress is madness.

Progress is all the old songs unspooled on the ground.]

His neighbors say it's better this way. Say the luck we clawed out of the ground will come back as fear, from the sky this time and ten times harder. About time to stop robbing the earth of its grave goods. But it was romantic, if nothing else, and it was his hands. He remembers it all as if through a viscous mirror, as if from a panoply of lenses cradled in the spaces between his ribs, a movie full of asides and indulgences: how the young men were combustion engines, letting everything around them rot for the love of noise, how the young men were handsome as oil dripped iridescent from their wounded mouths onto the asphalt, how the young men were coursing with petroleum, unlit matches, their force derived from the gun-&-crumble of other people’s lives. They’re old now, and worn, and the people they loved are dead. The decades didn’t so much pass as erode, touching everything as they went.

The devil you know?

We buried him last autumn in our best suits.

Forgive me Earth, for I tried to grow Bella Lamberty

Open on a wide field of grass Miles past earth You were there, in my arms I become forgiveness I would grow clarity I would grow ourselves So I could see clearly Or just to see at all I want to be the most forgivable thing about earth I wanna find every lovable atom in the universe And eat it into bits.

I've been hoping for a miracle like this, Just to show you what I'm worth.

The universe brought in its fruits of desire, Painted them fresh and made me eat it.

Even I can't deny a thing about the universe But if I can be the most forgivable thing about Earth

Then all this love can fade away I would grow nonsense I would grow rain I would make sure it rained pennies All over our graves I want to be every lovable atom in the earth Then feed all your hearts till they're stuffed No one gets any more or any less I'll take every lovable atom in the earth And crush them under my fists I'll take you away into the universe And show you love all great philosophers would kill for Then I'll take it away.

HALF A RAIN Liam Rio

I am half a rain.

Drifting in and out of the clouds.

Landing on hats, heads, bodies, places.

Falling into places.

Leaving things behind.

Washing away.

Half a rain, half a sun, half a day a midnight stained purple, with splotches of grey.

Too young to say too young, too young to believe too young, too old to be this young.

Confused, self importance, self import self in, selfie.

Taking selfies, self reflection or self obsession, or reflecting obsession on too many old things, too few new, and too many too far away.

Climate Change Keira Lorelei VanDerBeck

The house is on fire, pounding, pounding, pounding, screaming at the top of its lungs like my beaten-down brain.

Yet no one hears, no one stops to care for the broken girl or the broken world.

A movement coming together, creating something out of nothing like the tears in my mind, the black holes of my soul.

Burning until there is nothing left but ashes.

Starving until there is nothing left but bones.

I am not separated from the burning house,

I am the burning house in a place where firemen don’t exist.

We must extinguish our own fires or else the whole world will be ablaze, filled with shattered pieces of broken dreams, silenced like my voice.

But still I stand, my pen a glint of sunlight bleeding through the darkness.

Why? Willow Dilweg

Why am I standing here, looking out over a desolate wasteland?

I remember when the world was green and alive.

When the air was cool and sweet and water ran cold and fresh from the earth.

Why am I standing here seeing the corpses of trees littering the ground?

Lifeblood stolen xylem and phloem snapped broken.

I remember when your leaves stretched to the sky and your branches held my first cautious attempts at climbing.

I remember being nestled in your branches pressing the palm of my hand to the bowl of the blue sky thinking that that was touching the top of the world and convinced naïve in a world that has now made me wise that I could do anything.

But I can’t I know it now.

I can’t put this broken world back together.

My hands are still too small to heal the wounds in the earth.

Horizon of Hope Anika Khanam

The fire in the forest Growing fear Missions are deepest But still not even clear Blames are steepest Actions are unclear To our mother planet, our dearest We all are near…

Everything seemed harmless at first until it became a thirst From cutting down trees to destroying the hives Nothing left behind Maybe it’s out of our sight So lemme spotlight it for you because you know you care You may not be able to change the past but know that your actions can make our future a little bit bright!

Etz Hachayim Theo Bellavia-Frank

I hope your sense of humor is better than mine, because fatalism is getting old and was never worth it. I hope the world is as beautiful as you are. I hope the world has room for you. I hope there are trees that smell like serenity to you alone. I hope you worry about the normal things, like how you’ll pass that chem test and who you’ll ask to prom and not how much longer until life is unsustainable. I hope you see everything that roots deep within you, and holds tight, and flourishes, and weaves its branches around your heart so that you might eat of it and live forever. Drink deeply of the tree of life and revel in the shade like I never could. Hold fast.

Shopping List for a Better Buffalo Massachussetts Avenue Project youth

Start with better roads better sidewalks better transportation better hospitals more shelters new mayors mayors who don't just repave the roads during election year better litter enforcement more tree cover more funding for schools less gentrification no more redlining affordable housing more job opportunities better apartments flowers everywhere the good neighbors in question no more bias in courts mandatory ownership of a cat more community involvement in policy making love more be gay more allies

PROMPT PROMPT PROMPT from Robin

Did you know weeds are a myth? Think about the act of pruning and the myth of weeds. Consider the following questions.

What must we prune from our community to make it stronger?

What has value that others might not see?

Did you ever cut something from your life that you regret?

PROMPT from Liam

You find yourself trapped, like a dandelion fuzz in the wind. Where would you go? What would you fear? What would you say as you pass over the burning world?

PROMPT

Write a letter to something or someone in the natural world. Perhaps a love letter to what makes Earth worth fighting for. Perhaps an apology to wildlife, air, deep seas, trees... from Liam's Climate Activism in Art workshop

PROMPT Paint a picture of the future if climate action is not taken.

from Liam's Climate Activism in Art workshop

PROMPT Create a work of art in any genre that places your loved one in a healthy world. If you like, you could also hint at what it took to get there. from Keira

PROMPT You get home to find that the rising sea levels have flooded your daughter’s playground after voting against a bill to slow down climate change. from Zelda

GET INVOLVED Saving our planet can be an overwhelming concept. To get involved, start local! Here are some organizations in Buffalo working hard for our collective futures: Massachusetts Avenue Project Western New York Land Conservancy The Clean Air Coalition Grassroots Gardens of WNY WNY Native Plants Collaborative Western New York Environmental Alliance Read "Using Publicly-Owned Vacant Land to Advance Sustainability and Equity in Buffalo, New York" A report presented by Partnership for Public Good & PUSH Buffalo

Just Buffalo Youth Ambassadors get a tour of Massachusetts Avenue Project.

WITH GRATITUDE Many thanks to Just Buffalo Writing Center staff, Youth Ambassadors, young writers, and teaching artists.

Thank you to Bella Lamberty for cover design.

Thank you to Sophie Zhu for collection design & layout.

Thank you to the staff & young performers of Ujima's Dunbar Youth Theatre Arts Project.

Thank you to Liam Rio, Sophie Zhu, Bella Lamberty, and Theo Bellavia-Frank for leading workshops on climate justice.

Thank you to the staff & youth workers at the Massachusetts Avenue Project.

Just Buffalo's Writing Center is a creative community of young writers, artists, & thinkers. Located on the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Just Buffalo Literary Center’s mission is to create and strengthen communities through the literary arts.

Learn more at justbuffalo.org