The BU EMERALD REVIEW ZINE "UP IN THE AIR" - SPRING 2021 - The Emerald Review

The BU
  EMERALD
 REVIEW ZINE
"UP IN THE AIR"

   SPRING 2021

As a sophomore, after reading about the results of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change report, I went down to the river. It's not too hard to get to the Charles River from the BU
campus--you just cross the bridge over the highway, the one from which you can see the city open up in
front of you, and step down onto the Esplanade, dodging joggers and bikers alike.

I sat down at the spot you see in this photo, and I thought about the future.

It's been about two years then, and some things have changed, and some things haven't. During that
year that type of concern for the future motivated me and my fellow founding members to start the
Climate Advocacy, Research, and Education (CARE) group at BU, which is where this zine project
originates from. The idea behind a creative zine for an environmental communication group was that it
be a way for people of all backgrounds and who had all sorts of different areas of skill and expertise to
contribute to the conversation about climate change. I hope that moving forward, through this project
or others, the Emerald Review continues to be an interdisciplinary place where creativity,
communication, and concern for environmental science can meet.

-Creative Editor Julia Maruca

Momentum
                                      photo and poem by Julia Maruca

There was a moment this summer--

(there were many moments this summer)

when a hummingbird

alighted on the birdfeeder.

And even as waves crashed against cliffs,

And even as the earth tilted in its orbit,

And even as smoke belched into the sky,

As servers whirred and gas diffused,

Even as trees fell and burned to pulp

as rivers overran their banks to flood,

As the future brewed in its boiling pot

and as ghosts of temperature floated off,

For a moment there was a bird on the birdfeeder

what eye there may be, against the storm.

The Statistical Likelihood of Remaining within 2ºC of Global Warming is 5%
                                        poem by Delaney Swann

My house is the oldest in the neighborhood.
         White siding, surrounded by 100-year-old water oaks, that can grow 24 inches in a year and root
ball so small you can’t help but marvel that it once held that tree in the ground.

From my house it takes two minutes to drive to the interstate
       When I sleep in dark, silent places – the only noise is the burning of jet fuel thousands of feet
above me – the panic starts in my body, shooting pain from my chest down the back of my arms.

It takes two hours to drive to Atlanta or Nashville starting at my house.
         I tell people I’m from Tennessee, and they always want to talk about Nashville. I have more to
say about the other southern metropolis – the steaming asphalt landscape of vast parking lots and
immobile highways.

There are eight churches within two miles of my house.
         I don’t have to google and check. I’m counting them off on my fingers. The faux-grandeur of
steeples promising that God wants you to capitalize on his creation, the molded polymers of light-up
billboards lining the highway, competing for your attention with the true all-night chapel of the lost and
lonely: Sonic.

Twice a year, my house is power-washed.
        My parents get to live the American promise – work hard, take one vacation, pressure wash the
smog from an endless stream of commuters and cargo-loaded semis off the siding, the bank owns more
than a quarter of your house and is still charging interest on student loans when you hit 50.

My house burned two years ago.
        My mom called at 5 a.m. to tell me, watching as flames engulfed the only place she’d lived in
longer than three years. It was March, and Boston was snow-free but still withholding green. For weeks
my stomach clenched in want of home. “Maybe we’ll move” my mom said over the phone while she
sorted through rubble.

Two every-hundred-years tornadoes have threatened my house in the last ten years.
        The arc of climate sends them to us at night. I slept through the first, but woke for the second.
The tree outside my window lurched recklessly, and then it cracked. Shallow roots couldn’t handle the
roar of weather. When the neighbors come with chainsaws in the morning to clean debris off the front
yard, they say my sister and I were spared by God.

My house’s image is burned into my memory.
        I don’t leave without knowing I don’t need to go back. In case the Qanon billboard on the drive
to Atlanta isn’t a farce. In case one of the remaining trees has better aim. In case my parents sell. In case
the weather does something unexpected before we tear past our 2º limit the way I pass neighborhoods
on the interstate – idly admiring the churches.

The Highway
Comic by Julia Maruca

Igneous Rocks
                                   Poem by Andrew Kelbley

How do we know

mountains don’t move

inch by inch

across the Earth?

What if they move involuntarily forced by undercurrents

only to be told they are not welcome?

So perhaps

they must rise up even further into the air

erode into the water

or spit fire in indignation.