When I learned about The Mixtape Review literary magazine, I was excited to submit one of my poems inspired by a song. Each poem and prose piece they publish is influenced by a song and you can listen to them while reading.
The publication’s mission is:
… to celebrate the role music plays in our writing: it inspires us, keeps us going, and fills the all-too-often silent room with more than sounds of our frantic typing. As writers ourselves, we have often wished that our readers can hear the music we describe in our writing. This was the initial idea for The Mixtape Review — an experimental magazine where published work is presented with a song chosen by the contributor.
What a fun, creative idea for a lit mag! I love being able to read writers’ words and then hear what inspired them, or vice versa … to listen to a song while reading, to fully immerse in the visceral experience the writer may have been in themself.
I’m so thrilled that The Mixtape Review published my poem “Things are still burning” in their third issue. The poem is inspired by the song “Are Things Still Burning” by Em Harriss, a sort of response to her melancholic question that echoes throughout the song. Give it a listen (before, during, or after reading the poem):
She paints a dystopian view of an Earth ravaged by fires. An especially poignant listen today on World Environment Day. At the end of the song, Em Harriss mentions being in a cold fortress, a prison cell with bad lighting — to me, this felt like it could be a sparse space station, where she was looking down on Earth and wondering when, or if, she could ever return. It felt eerily futuristic and present at the same time, a reflection of our current climate change crisis.
You can read my poem in full below:
Things are still burning
after “Are Things Still Burning” by Em Harriss
When the sky went black,
we didn’t know what to do.
We stayed inside for months,
threw towels over the windows
so we wouldn’t have to stare
back at an abyss we created.
I can’t imagine life on earth
now. Life on earth
is a sweaty mess.
We can’t breathe.
Children and the
elderly wear temperature-
regulating bodysuits.
Our houses are equipped
with smoke cyclers.
They constantly break.
We stay up all night
coughing. I have to tell you —
things are still burning.
The trees we planted
too late licked
by hungry flames.
Crops wither outside
beneath a hazy orange sky.
What does it look like to you
from 17,000 miles up?
Does smoke obscure
the mountain ranges and lakes,
the curve of rivers.
Can you still see clouds
casting hundred-mile
smudges on the earth.
The cover art for Issue III is by Alyson Peabody. Read the entire Issue III here, as well as the first two issues.