Downstream

Abstract

Downstream Sophie Klahr (bio) Sophie Klahr, poem, water, Enric Sala, ocean, downstream After Enric Sala Water is a symbol of God's MERCY on the earth. My lecture notes are full of capitalized words: Acidification is melting the BONES of the ocean; GRAIN is the currency by which we trade water; conservation is not a LUXURY; we once THOUGHT the ocean was too BIG to FAIL. The marine ecologist at the lectern holds himself like a tired Janus—"We have killed and /or eaten ninety percent of the large animals in the ocean," he says; he says, "This is a population that will not recover." Murmur murmur goes the listening choir. A massive screen hovering onstage shows a shot of some large school. The ecologist tells another of his dozen jokes about fish—he has learned to weave these into the truth. EVERYTHING GOES DOWNSTREAM AT SOME POINT, say my notes. THE OCEAN IS DOWNSTREAM OF EVERYTHING. [End Page 97] Sophie Klahr SOPHIE KLAHR's work has appeared in the New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Two Open Doors in a Field, forthcoming in March 2023 from Backwaters Press, and Meet Me Here at Dawn, from YesYes Books, and is coauthor alongside Corey Zeller of There is Only One Ghost in the World, forthcoming from Fiction Collective 2 in fall 2023. Copyright © 2022 University of North Carolina Wilmington