“Atlas” and “Y2K” are two poems from El próximo desierto / The Coming Desert, one of the few poetry collections engaging with the climate crisis from the perspective of the relations among capitalism, racism, authoritarianism, and colonial legacies in the Global South. Using a hybrid language that appropriates techniques from climate and speculative fiction, the collection launches a poetic exploration of the intertwined histories of social and ecological catastrophes. In feverish dreams influenced by the Latin American surrealist and avant-garde tradition, El próximo desierto / The Coming Desert asks how we may react to ecological and sociopolitical breakdowns, pointing to the urgency of problems too vast to be solved by idealism. In that vein, the speaker of “Atlas” and “Y2K” examines how humans have hallucinated their way into ruin, and invites the reader along to “stroll through a long, undulating wave.” We look at and beyond gas pump diagrams, photographs of waste, brochures of the most polluted rivers in Latin America to the extremities of weather wrought by climate change and violence wrought by authoritarian regimes and capitalist devastation.
El próximo desierto / The Coming Desert was translated into English in a collective workshop which included Santiago Acosta, the Women in Translation Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and me. — Tiffany Troy, translator
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Atlas
1.
This is a diagram of a gas pump.
At the bottom of the image, a text explains that the automatic shut-off nozzle was designed in 1939 by an inventor born in New Jersey.
The system is simple, but ingenious: ducts and small holes play with the air to stop or release the flow of fluid.
I remember reading a poem about a mirage induced by heat waves over a gasoline puddle.
I assumed that in those times gas stations were solemn spaces, for ritual and celebration.
Even today we can see them, on riverbanks or standing out between sand mounds.
All landscape is continually haunted by its previous lives.
Even the wind is full of specters belonging to a time without us.
2.
This photograph seems like a cutout from an old aviation magazine.
In the foreground, a man wears a leather jacket with plush collar, Persol sunglasses with tortoise shell frames, blue pants, and black boots.
He poses upright, supporting his weight on one leg and holding a bulky gray helmet under his arm.
A few steps behind, a woman looks at him. Her half open lips painted vermilion, with a silk scarf tied around her neck. In her right hand, a self-closing gas nozzle.
No aircraft appears in this photograph. Instead, a mountain of trash bins overflowing in the background. Empty tuna cans, coffee filters, dirty diapers, used needles, cattle bones.
The pilot’s smug expression, the woman’s stunned look.
Many times, from abandoned airport towers, I have seen the faded swath of land of the nearby landfill site.
3.
This is a brochure titled Visit the Most Polluted Rivers in Latin America.
On the banks of Rio Negro, in Brazil, violent currents of phosphorus and mercury have created a restless, convulsive landscape.
The Santiago River, in Jalisco, winds through an industrial corridor of more than four hundred factories. The children populating its banks know not to go near the foam that hardens every day between the bodies of dead fish.
The Guaire River, in Caracas, receives a daily offering of metals and bacteria. The inhabitants turn their backs, as if they are ignoring a diseased node or a clogged artery.
The Río de la Plata, in the south, takes first place as the most polluted river on the continent. Access to it has been closed off due to the thick, dark layer of oil covering its waters.
The last page of the brochure lists other great rivers that have already disappeared or been reduced to weak, dusty streams.
4.
This is an X-ray of two human lungs.
At the lower edge, in the margin, the following sentence:
“This is how 2018 begins – The days pass, death remains.”
Near the center of the X-ray, the shadow that made January a predictable month, one more—or one less—blot in the course of history.
Diseases make up their own geological horizon.
There the fossilized cartilage of the Holocene, here the gnawed bones of an era that bears our name.
5.
This is a sponsored button with the following phrase written in thick white typeface:
THERE ISN’T TIME TO THINK:
WE MUST ACT NOW.
In the background, a green filigree logo of two intertwined ears of wheat.
Without a doubt, a vestige from the Age of Agriculture.
In those years, people believed it was normal for weather to swing with great violence. Soon the cycle of droughts and floods would regain its rhythm.
But the strategic plans promised annually never came. Sporadic corporate goodwill was of no use either.
Hunger left a deep pustule in our belly, which continues to open and close like a carnivorous plant.
This is the only slogan with any remaining validity:
“Fierce times are coming. Nothing we assume is true.”
* * * * *
Y2K
The tip of the switchblade shines in the dark.
The front end of the Volkswagen was smashed. There were no injuries, but the police mistook my birthmark as a bruise caused by the accident.
When I was nine, I had fun throwing rocks at cars as they went down the road in front of my house.
At twenty-five, my windshield was bottle-bombed.
Most diseases nowadays are transmitted by animals.
There is a tiger living in the Moroccan embassy’s gardens. Staffers feed it whole sides of beef.
The decomposition of language has its origins in chemicals that have accumulated in the food chain for years.
We sit on the edge of the sidewalk as she tries to calm me down.
I try to explain that the fog was not to blame. I had been drinking.
They never taught us the value of our heritage.
A diet high in processed meats is the principal cause of skyrocketing student debt.
The recent decline in sperm counts mirrors the collapse of democracy in the West.
A friend of my brother kept a hand-carved wooden swastika in the trunk of his BMW.
A platinum blonde walks briskly along the opposite sidewalk.
Uneasy, we scan the horizon as we wait for the tow truck.
Most kidnappings occur between 6:30 and 10:30 at night.
The doubling of nitrogen levels in land ecosystems has not wrought a moral or intellectual revolution.
“He was conscious the entire time, completely conscious.”
Some people believe the world ended more than a century ago and that we’re nothing but the recordings of an unavoidable future.
The auto shop attendant rubs the antenna of his walkie-talkie absentmindedly against the corrugated wall.
We hadn’t felt this way since 1999.
A Wikipedia entry explains The Great Y2K apocalypse in detail:
In Japan, just after midnight, an alarm sounded for nine minutes straight at the Onagawa Nuclear Power Plant.
In the United States, 150 slot machines at racetracks in Delaware were all shut down at the same time.
In Argentina, 3,000 fast-food discount cards stopped working.
How do you save someone who is lost in delusion and heads right towards their own ruin?
The bullet pierces the skull of a dissident with a sharp pop.
The insurance company will contact me in two weeks, but I won’t take the call.
Get into the simulator with me and let us stroll through a long undulating wave.