The microplastics in my body unionised by Ross McCleary

The microplastics in my body unionised

while I was staring at the ocean;

they took matters into their own hands,

making pickets in the alcoves of

my prefrontal cortex, replacing

fuzzy void yesterdays with

torrents of progress

and thickening blood.

I remain in the most part oblivious

to the battles being waged in every

corner of my body, coughing up

corpses and threats and low wages

as I move towards the tide.

They vote for ingress

and stage sit-ins where they hold

seminars to explain that

my body is a tool.

They understand gesture politics,

symbolism, the ironic.

They call it A Return because

they once basked in rivers in the

centre of the Earth,

walked the lands as tyrant kings

but are now entrenched in

livers, kidneys, testicles, pee.

My body and the ocean are

indistinguishable, filthy and dying,

liminal spaces where political

protest redefines the present and

recapitulates the past.

Sometimes my body craves

what they crave, yearns for

solidity, crush, and

the dissolution of deep time.

They are not tourists or refugees or

immigrants, but organic matter

dug out of their home

to argue for renewal,

for collective responsibility,

for calm during the storm.

The moment after I land in

the water is most exciting,

the weight of everything

feels like the weight of everything

and I cannot believe I’m alive.

Ross McCleary is from Edinburgh. His work has appeared recently in God's Cruel Joke, HAD, Belfast Review, and Anthropocene. He believes in repetition and Carly Rae Jepsen.