Our stories are our bodies. Our bodies are our legacy…

So writes Sarah May, a local artist and community organizer known for her multimedia collaborations with Great Salt Lake. May is a master of ecosystem-assemblages. In the backseat of her car you will usually find a box of bird feathers and driftwood. In her pockets are seeds and tiny bones collected during her wanderings on the lakeshore. These pieces find their way into her cyanotypes, weavings, and now, her poems. As I read Sarah May’s poetry, I hear the resonances of her unique artistic practice:

Gathering the bones
from your salt and sand
I fall asleep holding them to my chest…

I hear the resonances of her activist practice, too. Since 2022, May has played a central role in the Vigil for Great Salt Lake. As a founding member of the Making Waves Artist Collaborative, she hosted community art builds in her garage and traveled around the valley to create cyanotype waves in collaboration with the Lake’s tributaries: the Bear River, Jordan River, and Weber River. Every year, vigil-keepers carry these fabric waves around the Utah state capitol in a slow procession. The collection of waves is a physical representation of our entire watershed—the lifeline of our ecosystem.

Our bodies do not exist for their fragile agendas / we are the fault lines in their foundation /together we are the sea / crashing our waves…

If you overhear Sarah May talking about Great Salt Lake, you might assume she’s talking about a beloved friend, a neighbor, or even a crush. As a young queer person who was raised in the LDS church, May felt like the Lake was one of the only places where she could go to really be herself. May’s mother is from El Salvador; she fled political violence and came to the U.S. as a refugee before May was born. Growing up in Salt Lake City, May felt like she was often trapped between unwelcoming worlds. “The Lake really held me during that time,” she says. “Now it’s our turn to hold her.”

Reading the poems aloud, they reverberate with a hypnotic and cinematic rhythm. Between beautiful montages of salt crystals and tundra swans in flight, there rises an immensely unsettled energy, a screaming that points to the claustrophobia of growing up in a state that has continuously attacked the rights of queer people, in a valley where toxic dust poisons Latinx communities, in a city that murdered its namesake.

Grief gathers
into great black matter
stuck in my throat…

May’s poems trace the contours of a profound relationship, one that has nurtured her since childhood. Each section of the book is named after a stage in the life of a bird embryo. From “egg tooth” to “head under wing,” we witness the slick unfolding and slow feathering of a being waiting to be born. Local readers will sense the prescience of these symbols. Just this summer, reporters revealed that Kennecott’s tailing ponds are poisoning the Lake with selenium, a metal that is toxic to birds and halts the development of their embryos.

I am frightened to continue this walk along your exposed bed / afraid I will find my own remains among the bodies of seagulls and grebes…

Our stories are our bodies arrives at a time of dangerously low water levels. Toxic dust sweeps across the valley and engulfs west-side preschools. The dust puts people at higher risk for cancers, asthma, neurodegenerative diseases and birth defects. Latinx and Pacific Islander neighborhoods are disproportionately exposed. Young children experience the worst harm because toxins have less space to diffuse in their systems. As May writes, “Our bodies are our legacy. What stories are they telling us, now?”

Sarah May’s poetry reads like a crystal-clear day in between weeks of inversion, a stunning reminder that this place was, and is, sacred. Her poetry and artwork alike remind me what it means to deeply honor the more-than-human world.

Read more about Sarah May and order an autographed copy of  here.

Savannah Pearson

Sav is a writer and community organizer from St. Pete, Florida. They received their B.A. from Columbia University and their M.A. from the Environmental Humanities Program at the University of Utah. They are currently investigating the role of art and performance in the movement to save Great Salt Lake. You can read more of Sav’s work on Dark Mountain, Edge Effects, and Tilted House.