by Marina Carreira
We were born fighting for breath,
each inhale a dice-throw, no buffer
between chemical and clean air
in this concrete dreamland
we call home, where trees have swords
for arms, where carnations crack the concrete;
this sacrifice zone tracked by hot-rolled steel,
rivered by plastic and pollutants, while planes fly
overhead, trailing out lead, taking people
who don’t live this way far from here,
to an island birded by color, swept immaculate
by sand, watered in ways we will never know,
and still we grow; we create and we compost,
we farm and we feed, we take and we give, we pray
to our Lady of Newark that Covanta not kill us
before morning coffee, before the corn and cabbage
ripen Down Bottom under the hazy August sun.
Marina Carreira (she/they) is a queer Luso-American multidisciplinary artist from Newark, NJ. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Carreira is the author of Desgracada (Bottlecap Press, 2023), Tanto Tanto (Cavankerry Press, 2022), Save the Bathwater (Get Fresh Books, 2018), and I Sing To That Bird Knowing It Won’t Sing Back (Finishing Line Press, 2017). She has exhibited her art at the Newark Museum, Morris Museum, ArtFront Galleries, Monmouth University Center for the Arts, among others. Carreira was honored in 2021 as the City of Newark’s LGBTQ Pride Champion for her work in LGBTIQ+ advocacy and mutual aid. She is a 2024 Luso-American fellow in the DISQUIET Literary Program. Carreira works in higher education and teaches Women and Gender Studies at Kean University. Find her on Instagram at @savethebathewater.
Featured image: an illustration by Sylvia Padilla, pen ink and marker on paper. Padilla is a Newark Native and northern New Jersey based creative.
The Newarker 