Romulus to Brother Remus
poetry by Erin Hanyu Lynch
Romulus To Brother Remus
“People are changing Earth so much, warming and polluting it,
that many scientists are turning to a new way to describe the time we live in.
They’re calling it the Anthropocene — the age of humans.”
-Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press (1)
Frater:
I began pumping you full of poison
long ago, slipped just beneath the skin
then veins pulsing black, labyrinthine
network of toxin. I was cautious;
you, resistant, bewildered—eyes starry
wide. And scientists called it
the Anthropocene: I, Anthropos; you, static
beneath my feet. History would have us
believe you died quick and bled slow,
a fratricide too swift to fault
me, but this was a calculated game
from the start, and the gleam
in my eyes flickered frigid as you
fleshed into the soil of my young
empire. Death nothing more
than a chore to complete. Life nothing
more than the conquest of worlds: intersection
of blood and desire. I want
to expand outward, to explore—
to clutch the cosmos in my fist. To
leave you behind, curled fragile-
small, brother bruised
bitumen-black.
Before the Anthropocene, you and I
suckled on wolf-mother’s teat. Carnivorous
already, milk of a blood-seeker’s breasts
catching fire in our stomachs, we were bred
to kill.
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(1) Borenstein, Seth. “With Their Mark on Earth, Humans May Name Era, Too.” Associated Press News. October 14, 2014. Accessed November 29, 2019. https://apnews.com/c999a20fb7114f818c0398c0e40720ab/having-made-mark-earth-humans-may-name-era-too
When I Say Environmentalist,
I Mean
poetry by Erin Hanyu Lynch
When I Say Environmentalist, I Mean
Mangled moonlight tonight—
Or: the hacking of helicopters,
such vicious sound groping
at the air. The sky only a slim column
of throat, purpled under the fingers
of Man Himself. O Mother, what we do
to You. One continent south,
green lungs shrivel black. I understand.
Bodies like mine have known this violence
for generations.
Erin Hanyu Lynch
Erin Hanyu Lynch is a rising freshman at the University of Chicago. The queer hapa daughter of an author-gardener and a gardener-neuroscientist, she harbors a fierce passion for writing and for climate justice—often, both at once. Two of her poems have appeared in the September 2018 issue of the Rising Phoenix Review. She sometimes appears on Twitter @paintedxlady.