Poem 1)
This is our new Home?
Just before the confluence of the
Mississippi and Missouri
On either side of the river
The water will take you
Nothings untouchable
Wading through water you get hit by debris
Your hands are cut by thorns of rust
Your legs are scraped from shin to knee
Your feet are etched with dirty wounds
Your bruises are hues of purples and blues
Get up! Get up!
Scrape the rust from your knees
The water will take you
Nothings untouchable
Poem 2)
It burns like spices stuck in the throat
Mom - where is the milk
Honey, look in the fridge
Mom - I can’t find the fridge
Everything
drowning
Infectious
Parasitic
Through my intestines
Through my town
The flood makes you sick
Sweltering heat burns your skin
Mosquito bites cover your body
Exhaustion of the mind and muscles
Devastation sets in
Hope drowns
Poem 3)
Homes turn to boxes of remnants
Tape wont stick
Humidity droplets create streams on walls
Like frog residue on the porch windows
y’ont
Water pools
People throw in the towel
The carpets a sponge
Leaks spring
Buckets were wishful thinking
Sand barriers were false hope
Provisions are out of stock
The kids have too many flood days
We won’t even get a summer
Poem 4)
Electricity gets shut off
It pisses you off
Building’s flood
Walls disintegrates
Concrete erodes
Floors separate
Telephone poles domino with cords attached
Re-uniting underwater
They become slingshots
We are the pebbles
Then they snap
Torpedo into the side of your
Boat, your home,
Taking with it your favorite memories
Wires coil your rudder
You reach in the water
Untangle the mess
Hope your hands still there
When you pull it out
Now you’re happy they shut the electricity
Poem 5)
Billboards snap in half
Patios are boat docks
Not the partying kind
Graveyard caskets float by
Animals are trapped
People swim till they can’t run
Till they can’t bike
Try to mutate
Into aquatic animals
Catfish don’t knock at the door
Snakes crawl through the inside walls
Floodwaters enter the sewers
Toilets backup into the house
And back into the flood water
Everything is one now
Except humans and water
Floating buildings merge with oncoming traffic
The ducks even know where to cross
But humans can’t figure it out
I haven’t even figured out how to float
I can’t even figure out how to breathe
Poem 6)
Shotguns sported
Local homes looted
Bloodlines rupture
Dividing lines deepen
Fights break out
Anchors disintegrate
Floatation device is waterlogged
Parking lots are lakes
Roads are waterways
RV’s are submarines
The levee gives way
Property lines become mudslides
Poem 7)
When the rain stops
Water doesn’t evaporate into thin air
The insurance agent writes “just mildew”
A neglectful understatement
Different types of black mold is spreading
Mushrooms are blooming on top
It’s all the perfect ecosystem for the porch Frogs
Repugnant stench from everything rotting
Moist fungi are clinging to my shoes
A snake fell out of the ceiling
Got stuck during the flood
I wish that agent would walk through our halls
at night in the dark
On the way to the bathroom
Accidentally stumble into “just mildew”
With bare skin
Feel the moist lick against his precious skin
Send shivers through the collar bones
Go back to bed
For comfort and warmth
To find cold, wet bedsheets
That have been soaking up the “just mildew”
Condemned signs start appearing
Insurance companies give ultimatums
People are improperly displaced
Poem last)
This place isn’t killing us
We are killing this place
I wonder about a thing
they call a thing
that some say
isn’t a thing
I wonder if that thing
applies to me
