Someone sends me a recording
of tomato plants screaming. It isn’t a scream exactly,
but a series of clicks and pops, somehow more terrifying,
and the scientist explains, it only cries out when
it is in danger. All plants do this, she says,
and I imagine the house plants I’ve
quarantined in a basement room
with an artificial light, trying to cure them
of parasites and fungi, but more often than not,
I forget, out of sight. And I know they must be so loud
in that room, two floors below were I sit and write
about how lost I am from nature,
about how I dream in green. The scientist says
each species has its own language,
distinct sounds for distinct traumas,
words we can’t hear by just listening,
the frequency is wrong for us,
the sound of their suffering,
Not for you, not for you.
This poem first appeared in Gyroscope (2023).
—
Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a biology teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, Cobra Milk, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. She is the author of a full-length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, available from Unsolicited Press, as well as two chapbooks, As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press) and Running Aground (Finishing Line Press).
