UnderCurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies (E-Journal - York University)

Driving home on Bathurst Street I see a sudden cotton tree and understand they also grow in col

Wolff, Elana

Driving home on Bathurst Street
I see a sudden cotton tree
and understand they also grow in cold
in lion-hearted March in Spartan-yards.
Formed from slim deciduous limbs
whose lingering leaves 
get masked
to bolls
that won’t become designer clothes or batting.
But little fists
that power me to Israel and Egypt where
the cotton boils on bushes
in its actual abode.
There’s this image I have of  stomping on cotton
in a chain-link
bin in 
a field
near Ein Harod.
Alone in the heat for long enough
I dare to take my t-shirt off.
I stand there sweating
gaping
at my naked cotton bra.
The bolls beneath my feet are pliant fibre:
I’m pariah white
and strafed with blood
from scrapes with bracts and burs.
by Elana Wolff
BOLLS


English

BOLLS

Sandilands, Catriona

"The Arbutus/ Madrone Files: Reading the Pacific Northwest" by Laurie Ricou

Editorial Collective, UnderCurrents

Back Matter

Huet de Guerville, Diana

Mural Art Along the Streets of Porto Alegre

Warkentin, Traci

by Traci Warkentin
scream
so Human
They say
eerie
tugging at flesh
threatening to expose the palimpsest the 
Body has become
written over with exclusivity
Hierarchy
separateness
yet only Superimposed 
over what cannot be effaced
entirely
within
the body remembers
heeding the call of  other bodies
responding fervently
heart galloping
breath sucking in
sharp
prickling skin 
shuddering spine
wince
piercing the denial
so Human
They say?
They have it backwards
the body knows
bodies do not lie to one another
it is a corporeal contract
of  visceral language
fragmented tongues of  coherence
bleeding continuous flesh
flesh and sinew
guttural and flailing
cries 
ripped from throats
with the acrid fullness of  Terror
pungent agony
assaulting nostrils
flaring
stabbing ear drums
stinging flesh
piercing the denial
piercing the denial 
of  the latent animal 
that is me
embodied.


scream

Anti-GMO Protest at the WSF

Witte, Christine

Fish Trees

Patience found expression in these&nbsp;anglingarabesque

by Elana Wolff
MEN IN LINE Eilat
Patience found expression in these
angling 
arabesques
whose prize, an inter-
mitten bite, is fish
too small to satisfy an appetite for food.
Something more absorbs these men
their backs before the sun, exposed,
buckets filling up fertility figures.
(None of  the fish are given
back.)
I’m not aware of  the name of  the catch;
I’m not aware of  numbers.
Only the shimmering struggle (which I
see)
and the arid wind; the sun-
burnt purple mountains over Aqaba in
the 
valley.
Not the view that Lawrence saw in 1917
coming out of  the desert with disciples.


MEN IN LINE Eilat

Karrow, Sheila

Encroachment

Norman, Garrry

this my addiction
to touch all i can
i the landlord conquistador
with tentacles omnipresent
and vampire’s teeth
suck at the neck of  the earth
it  is  mine
mine in which to feed
to nest  to romp  mine to leach
and never look back
it my playpen
i its plague
mine
by Norman


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