Mother Nature Doesn’t Care If You’re Ignorant
The Evergreen Review, December 2025
This silver trailer full of live bulls
cramped darkly together being trafficked
now pulls to the right
of this Highlander that pulls us
through grays of downtown Houston
while Esmat the driver says nature
doesn’t care if you’re ignorant, mother
nature doesn’t owe you an answer
referring to the last big freeze in which he lost power
meaning also he has left Islam and Afghanistan forever
meaning he agrees yes religion is clever
not only in furnishing answers
to those cattle-fly questions of creation
and continuation and unequal suffering
but in asserting such faith
in answers themselves when even God
would be a mystery he says
and I think
you should have heard these two guys
across the aisle on the plane
not father and son but very audibly
bonding it was answer after answer
I’m a socially liberal
guy says one Me too says the other
But you know the first thing
they do when they come here is break the law
What precedent does that set
It’s becoming too much
They’re shoving all this stuff down our throats
Hey listen as a member of the gay community
myself
I’m telling you it’s been hijacked
that trans stuff that’s not my community
Listen
I own
a hair salon and my employee takes
her kid to the park and this other kid
10 or 12 in a full cat costume I mean
is hissing I’m telling you hissing
at her 4 year old
all the other kids are crying and can’t
get on the slide so
they called the cops on him the cops came
and said Hey this kid identifies as a Cat
he has the right to stay here
My right hand to God this is a real story
People are getting sick of this
shit it’s out of hand
I listened to these two publicly
airing shared views before telling each other yeah
nice meeting you and wondered how racist
I was or might be
to regard that whiteness they shared
that mind of a certain whiteness
to regard which
you must have a mind of winter
And now on this winter Sunday
the Lord’s very day as instructed
we members of the wedding are all in black and white
as the two grooms descend
from some heaven of color in plum and pink down the stairs
and their fathers and their mothers
pour wine together
in front of us so deep and dark red
I think how
viscerally American
this has to be for the Panamanian family
aren’t they stereotypically against this union
the way I know Jamaican relations would be
thanks to all those godly answers
instead of godly questions and there at the reception
I see the tall Israeli I dated
before all the killing blew things up
along with our own unexplainable natures
can’t nature explain
what makes him beautiful to me
or how on Martin Luther King Day again I am airborne
without one thought of plumage or its hues
until the little screen shows
Henry Louis Gates telling LeVar Burton
who starred in Roots that his great-great-grandfather
was a white man named Dixon and instead
of watching that inauguration today
I’m up in the sky watching
LeVar’s eyes widen
over the sprawl of this country
whose executive orders will tomorrow try
to strip birthrights from its immigrants
and protections from various outsiders
and trash the climate pact because
our climate is now fully controlled
and come March
all the bulls riding in that eight-wheeled trailer
will be rioting bucking
with illusory freedom inside
the rodeo’s man-made wide and illusory border
testing the triumph
of containment the triumph
of an order
of breeders and riders
and are we at odds
or at one
with nature when a plane is in the air
and have yet to come down
from the moment
when two grooms tell everyone reach under your chairs
pull out those fans and fan them
up high
and the moment is ours and ours a sea
of rainbow butterflies and this is our nature
you can see everyone
has an arm raised to testify
a right hand to God
an eager hand fluttering
to answer a Teacher
who is calling on you
yes you to ask
what answer
do you have for us today
what answers do you have
if you can’t
answer love
The Evergreen Review, December 2025
This silver trailer full of live bulls
cramped darkly together being trafficked
now pulls to the right
of this Highlander that pulls us
through grays of downtown Houston
while Esmat the driver says nature
doesn’t care if you’re ignorant, mother
nature doesn’t owe you an answer
referring to the last big freeze in which he lost power
meaning also he has left Islam and Afghanistan forever
meaning he agrees yes religion is clever
not only in furnishing answers
to those cattle-fly questions of creation
and continuation and unequal suffering
but in asserting such faith
in answers themselves when even God
would be a mystery he says
and I think
you should have heard these two guys
across the aisle on the plane
not father and son but very audibly
bonding it was answer after answer
I’m a socially liberal
guy says one Me too says the other
But you know the first thing
they do when they come here is break the law
What precedent does that set
It’s becoming too much
They’re shoving all this stuff down our throats
Hey listen as a member of the gay community
myself
I’m telling you it’s been hijacked
that trans stuff that’s not my community
Listen
I own
a hair salon and my employee takes
her kid to the park and this other kid
10 or 12 in a full cat costume I mean
is hissing I’m telling you hissing
at her 4 year old
all the other kids are crying and can’t
get on the slide so
they called the cops on him the cops came
and said Hey this kid identifies as a Cat
he has the right to stay here
My right hand to God this is a real story
People are getting sick of this
shit it’s out of hand
I listened to these two publicly
airing shared views before telling each other yeah
nice meeting you and wondered how racist
I was or might be
to regard that whiteness they shared
that mind of a certain whiteness
to regard which
you must have a mind of winter
And now on this winter Sunday
the Lord’s very day as instructed
we members of the wedding are all in black and white
as the two grooms descend
from some heaven of color in plum and pink down the stairs
and their fathers and their mothers
pour wine together
in front of us so deep and dark red
I think how
viscerally American
this has to be for the Panamanian family
aren’t they stereotypically against this union
the way I know Jamaican relations would be
thanks to all those godly answers
instead of godly questions and there at the reception
I see the tall Israeli I dated
before all the killing blew things up
along with our own unexplainable natures
can’t nature explain
what makes him beautiful to me
or how on Martin Luther King Day again I am airborne
without one thought of plumage or its hues
until the little screen shows
Henry Louis Gates telling LeVar Burton
who starred in Roots that his great-great-grandfather
was a white man named Dixon and instead
of watching that inauguration today
I’m up in the sky watching
LeVar’s eyes widen
over the sprawl of this country
whose executive orders will tomorrow try
to strip birthrights from its immigrants
and protections from various outsiders
and trash the climate pact because
our climate is now fully controlled
and come March
all the bulls riding in that eight-wheeled trailer
will be rioting bucking
with illusory freedom inside
the rodeo’s man-made wide and illusory border
testing the triumph
of containment the triumph
of an order
of breeders and riders
and are we at odds
or at one
with nature when a plane is in the air
and have yet to come down
from the moment
when two grooms tell everyone reach under your chairs
pull out those fans and fan them
up high
and the moment is ours and ours a sea
of rainbow butterflies and this is our nature
you can see everyone
has an arm raised to testify
a right hand to God
an eager hand fluttering
to answer a Teacher
who is calling on you
yes you to ask
what answer
do you have for us today
what answers do you have
if you can’t
answer love