A sign from “Climate Signals,” by Justin Brice Guariglia (Photo by Lisa Goulet, courtesy of The Climate Museum and The NYC Office of Climate Policy and Programs)

 

after Justin Brice Guariglia’s
public art installation, Brooklyn

The traffic sign flashes
pointillistic messages
into the sloping night—

two boys speak softly
in Spanish, sitting
against the weighted base—

its signals, warnings:
           CLIMATE CHANGE AT WORK,
      VOTA ECO LOGICAMENTE, 
 

HUMAN AGENDA AHEAD
—clouds mirror a feeble 
urban glow in gray, 

skyline a distant centipede 
of luminescent scales, concealing 
mown grass, delayed autumn, soft murmurs. 

Published in the April 2021 issue: View Contents
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John Linstrom is series editor of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Library for Cornell University Press. His poems and nonfiction have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, the New Criterion, the Antioch Review, and elsewhere.

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