“The Canadian wildfires and i watch Interstellar”

Soundgarden sang Black Hole Sun

and the sky took it literally.

AQI my new RGB:

Violet-coded smog

coats the violets outside.

Kindergarten purple made deadly.

A one-day apocalypse

spawns a million more

in my mind:

mechanic lungs, surrogate

trees, synthetic sun.

"Rage," they tell us,

"Rage against the dying

of the light."

Oh honey,

even Rage inhales

to scream.

Aileen Dosev is a poet studying business, sustainability, and complex systems at the University of Michigan. When inspiration strikes, she brews her poems in a cast-iron pot with bay leaves and a splash of irony.

Artist’s Statement: “Yellow wildfire smoke coated cities across the United States in the summer of 2023. This poem wonders what our resistance to climate disaster looks like in a world where every breath can no longer be taken for granted.”