wildscape. literary journal

There Are Too Many Fascists To Stay In The Forest
by Jessica Aure Pratt

I’ve started writing poetry and now the dishes 
are languishing. The laundry is a pile of 
soot and the weeds are becoming a 
metaphor about capitalism. My brain is 
turning to compost and growing
fields of flowers and brambles and moss.
I start dreaming in another language 
where everything becomes animate,
becomes intertwined, becomes an 
abstraction. Have you ever felt the 
construct of your perception of reality 
start bridging gaps at the rate you hear
people do when they eat mushrooms -
and begin to understand why art  
is necessary for revolution, for empathy, 
for democracy, for processing life and love 
and grief and despair and why we want 
to become a redwood tree rooted in
an ancient forest on an aging planet
in a shining and archaic spinning void?
It’s tempting to stay in the forest. 
If only it hadn’t been ordered to 
be chopped down - there is so much 
work to be done.

about the author // Jessica Aure Pratt