Editor’s Note: As reporters and researchers who write (and photograph) to create art as much as to document or analyze, we’ve long wanted to expand Deceleration’s publishing to literary and artistic responses to polycrisis—the nexus of climate, political, and social violence we currently confront. In response to struggles over migratory birds and trees at Brackenridge Park, for instance, we’ve supported Word for Birds in past years and published poetic responses during public meetings. Today we’re honored to publish Shelley Ettinger’s powerful poem, “They Want to Kill Greta Thunberg,” to signal a new standing feature of our work going forward. In August, we’ll publish a collection of poems that reflect on connections between the vanishing ice of warming seas and the ICE now fully funded and charged with vanishing our friends, family and neighbors. Got poetry, prose, photos, visual art or other creative responses to this theme? Send it to editor@deceleration.news with the subject heading “Pitch: Arts and Letters.” We are able to offer a small stipend of $25 per poem upon publication. — Marisol Cortez
‘They Want to Kill Greta Thunberg’
It was one thing when she stayed in her
designated lane. Climate change, sure, okay.
Kid thinks she can save the Earth hey knock
yourself out give it all ya got they’ll keep
doing what they do planet be damned. They’re
the big boys and what they say goes. Greta
thundered and they carried on. This is different.
This time she went too far. She was supposed
to stay ashore. Scream into the wind. Utter her
useless outrage while the world burns. She was
supposed to stick to the script. Climate change
blah blah wildfires tornadoes floods blah blah
blah but this. She was on a ship. That was going
to Gaza. Food diapers medicine. Real aid for
real people starving and dying in Gaza. Little
blonde girl crossed the line. She had to be
stopped. She was though bloodlessly for now.
Handled carefully to preclude bad press, treated,
she said, better than any Palestinian please
don’t talk about me, she said, talk about them
and also she said she’s going back. This time
in a flotilla. She knows they want her dead. It
doesn’t matter stopping famine does saving
babies. Life is her cause even if it puts hers
in danger. I believe she’s sincere. Not a stunt.
She’s brave is all. Committed. Willing to take
the risk. I admire her, this fifty years younger
than me soldier for a righteous cause. I want
her to survive but no more than I want it
for every soul still alive in Palestine. They
want to kill Greta Thunberg like they want
to kill them all us all the queer and trans the
Black and Brown but they can’t because
we always fight back which is why I’m with
her I’m with you Greta I’m there Gaza I
stand with Palestine they want to kill you us
but they can’t because you we always fight back
