Among the Dead
Sacramento, California
2016, Junior, Poetry & Spoken Word
I walk among the bodies
The beautiful beaches of Mexico,
Filled with the dead, the dying
I hear the quiet lap of the water against the shore
Bringing in more bodies, more dead, more dying
The water, thickened
By the oil
By the bodies
Lapping at the shore
It too is sick, dying
It laughs at us, mocking us
We the people who spilled oil
Who killed our brothers
Who smothered our neighbors
Out there, in the brilliant blue distance, there is a memory of life
But here, now, there is only death, only pain, only dying
And it is all our fault
I walk among the dead
Sit with the dying
I watch a turtle take his last breaths, smothered in oil
Cold, thick, deadly
I walk among the dead
I walk among the dying
The hundreds of fish, belly up
Littering the shores
Littering the beautiful shores of Mexico
I walk, tears stinging my cheeks
The smell of death thick in my nose
I walk, among the dead
Until I see her
In the sludge of the water, three feet from shore
Struggling
She is no longer white, beautiful, alive
She is the color of the oil, drowning in the cold slime of it
She is more oil than pelican
But, I watch her
As she refuses to give up
Refuses to become another body in this cemetery
Fighting to stay afloat
Fighting to raise her ruined, heavy wings and fly
I watch her
Watch her lift her wings, again and again
Refusing to believe they are useless
Refusing to believe she too is dying
That she will never again fly, swoop, soar
Refusing to give up hope
But it’s only a matter of time
Reflection
My poem, Among the Dead, focuses on the aftermath of the Mexican oil spill in April 2010. The hardest part of writing about a tragedy such as this one is making the disaster personal. Over 110,000 animals were injured or killed as a result of the oil spill. When you look at these looming sums, it is easy to forget the magnitude of each life that was lost. My poem toggles between both sides of this disaster. On one end, the deaths are just numbers, just items in the narrator’s world. This is shown by the “smell of death in the air” and the “hundreds of fish belly up.” On the other end, the deaths are hugely personal and devastating, shown by the deaths of the turtle and pelican. By individualizing the victims, the disaster became more relatable. I felt like I was more a part of the catastrophe. However, when you zoom in to see each story of loss personally, you often miss the big picture of the tragedy. As humans, we can grasp and understand one death. However, understanding and imagining hundreds of thousands of lost lives is difficult. It is hard to grasp the full calamity that these oil spills cause when you focus on each individual that lost their life. By telescoping back and forth between the two viewpoints, I hope to illustrate both a personal and realistic view of the Mexican Oil Spill in 2010.