Some years ago now someone found CelexaBenaZoAbilify
norfluoxine venlafaxine diphenhydramine paroxetine
in Great Lakes fish brains fish livers fish muscles even gonads
and reading about this I remembered Roger and Me
was set in Flint not far from Lake Huron, the very same city
where decades later it all came out some nameless guys
had led its residents to tainted water
then claimed they weren’t the ones who made the people drink.
“Besides, we all die anyway,” I believe is how it went down
at the hearing, which only just happened a month or so
ago; though the spokesman had a point: we’re all drinking
something that’ll kill us
microplastic arseniphosphate chlor-
insectipesticide which reminds me I think it’s weird
the French call weeds mauvaises herbes, “bad grasses”:
it seems les botanistes neglected to ask the honeybees
and pretty soon it’ll be too late. At first I didn’t understand
how antidepressants would make the poor Great-Lake-shrimp
suicidal: turns out Prozac led them toward the light
where it just so happens their predators hang out. But back
down in the weeds I’m thinking any bee would tell the French
Don’t blame the damn plants:
everything wants to find a way to come back
though the factory or the jobs Roger took from Flint
never did. Fun fact, the government sent truckloads of water
Nestle’s draining the Great Lakes to sell
but it was nowhere near enough to help them drink
all those years away, now the babies weaned on trihalomethanes
are schoolgirls and boys struggling to make it
through third grade—though even if they could they’d find
the teachers themselves are barely hanging on. Maybe
it’s time for a sequel to Roger and Me
which was a pretty good movie Michael Moore
but you didn’t need to show me the rabbit
alive flayed
jerking
This poem first appeared in It Will Have Been So Beautiful (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2024).
—
Amanda Shaw is the author the debut full-length collection It Will Have Been So Beautiful (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2024). Based in Washington, DC, she is a teacher and editor at The World Bank and other international organizations. Her poems have appeared in LEON Literary Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Mid-Atlantic Review, and Lily Poetry Review, where she is the reviews editor.
