Voting in the Time of Climate Change

By Ying Wu

The tide swallows most of the beach these days.
Sunbathers take refuge in the reeds.
And children wade in the new lagoons
that stretch across the soft, loose sand.
Our poles are melting.
The bay spills over the sidewalk sometimes
and breaches the steps of private homes.

Today, in Texas, voters spill down the sidewalk too.
Six-hour lines in Georgia.
Our world is changing.
Queues before dawn in Tennessee.
Crumbling ice shelves in Antarctica.
Thwaites Glacier has destabilized.
Voters defy the rain in Philadelphia.
Lines in Ohio reach the interstate.
Voters a quarter mile deep form a double wrap in Brooklyn.
The sea is rising.
We are the People.
Our tide is sweeping in.

Ying Wu, a poetry editor at Writers Resist, is a poet and cognitive scientist, and host of the Gelato Poetry reading series in San Diego (meetup.com/BrokenAnchorPoetry). She is also a proud member of the editorial team of Kids! San Diego Poetry Annual. More examples of her work can be found online at Poetry and Art at the San Diego Art Institute (poetryandartsd.com), in the Serving House Journal, and in Writers Resist, as well as in the material world at the San Diego Airport and in print journals, such as the Clackamas Literary Review.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.