D E L I V E R A N C E
can remember & Portland is 112 degrees
California’s dry as a desert throat
& likelier to asphyxiate heat waves catch
like a virus birth funeral after funeral
at the lip of Lake Tahoe where it’s never been hotter
a goggle-eyed tourist films a mama bear
trundling her triptych of cubs
through the threat of a swimsuited crowd
muscling down the people-peppered beach
into the water’s tepid respite
out of the ambient heat
the video goes viral
some headlines yell ISN’T IT CUTE?
others WE ARE ALL FUCKED
my headline shrugs it’s both
I watch on a screen in the kitchen
sip coffee like it’s any old day
separate the garbage from the compost
as tho three fewer peach pits in the landfill
might patch the ozone layer Jeff Bezos rides a phallus
-shaped machine from Texas to the stratosphere
to prove there is nowhere he won’t pillage
we turn our clocks to 11:11
wish on every star for his safe return
to the plutonian depths that forged him
11 minutes pass & disappoint us
he returns instead to earth
thanks the workers
whose lifeblood he extracts
for fun & money
In those 11 minutes
like any other 11 minutes
he has blinked 220 times
worked 0 seconds
& become $2,451,900 richer
I said
two million
four hundred fifty-one thousand
nine hundred dollars richer
In those 11 minutes
amazon delivery workers
have deposited packages
on 102,262 doorsteps
& made $3.30-$4.58 each
In those 11 minutes
hospital delivery workers
have helped 2,941 new people
tunnel out of other people
& into the global population
which traded those 2,941 new people
for 1,166 newly dead people
including
65 people murdered
by intellectual property laws
vaccine imperialism
medical apartheid
& reopening for business as usual
1,166 newly dead people
including [ ] people
who died on the job
[ ] people who died
bc they could not find a job
& [ ] people who died
from job-related stress & illness
1,166 newly dead people
including [ ] unhoused people
whose lives counted
whose deaths will be
neither counted
nor accounted for
In those 11 minutes
fast food workers have made their orders
known all over the so-called US
walking out & rallying for $15 an hour
before taxes earmarked for all
manner of warfare meanwhile
Jeff Bezos has gotten two million
four hundred fifty-one thousand
nine hundred dollars richer
In those 11 minutes
the streets of Bogotá & Barranquilla & Cali
have rumbled for the 83rd straight day
with Afro-Colombian trans women
& Indigenous students & disabled workers
marching & yelling & voguing
& striking & striking back & resisting
militarized cops repression & slow or sudden death
In those 11 minutes
7 women spent
a long 660 seconds of the second
of three long days in Wadena county jail
bc when they put their bodies on the Line
3 pipeline destruction site they threatened
the dominance of property capital
& heteropatriarchal settler colonial relations
In those 11 minutes
some people lived
every second
as tho
the end
were not nearer,
& nearer,
& nearer,
&nearer,
&nearer,
&nearer,
&nearer,
&nearer,
&nearer,
&nearer,
[inevitable]
stevie redwood
stevie redwood is a disabled sino-jewish neuroemergent introvert genderpervert homotrash littledreamer bigmouth freak living & dying on Yelamu Ohlone land / San Francisco, CA. they like shittalk, porchsitting, leaflitter, & riffraff. find them trolling yimbys on twitter @trash_whisperer.