PARTICULATES//Tulips: (Or, Estimating Respiratory Effects of Ambient Air Pollution and COVID-19 Using a Policing-Climate Adjusted Hazard Function)

Abstract

Through poetry, I offer a creative, critical analysis of the intersections of COVID-19, structural racism, and racialized police violence—situating present COVID-19 discourse within a broader historical arc of respiratory distress within communities of color, all while centering Earth Day and climate change as both metaphor and corollary. In doing so, I enact poetry as praxis, reflecting critically on the racialized contexts and consequences of overlapping threats to our health, while simultaneously crafting counternarrative to public health’s ahistoric, apolitical, and racist proclivities in times of public health crises