Black Water

By Emma Johnson-Rivard

 

We were told the terms

had increased.

 

Consider need within

and without. A community,

relationships, the well of us

in these times.

 

Commitments were made. Fear not.

The cost will be covered. This will not

adversely affect you, but recruiting has

already begun. You cannot stop it.

 

The fish swim through the black and the crude,

we call them unreasonable not for dying

but instead for noting that the current has run

out of space. We are not made of greed to want

to breathe, to swim through the dark and deep.

 

We know the score of us. We will not go quietly.

 

 

 

​​​​Emma Johnson-Rivard is a doctoral candidate in fiction at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Coffin Bell, Red Flag Poetry, and others. She can be found at Bluesky at @blackcattales and at emmajohnson-rivard.com.