After Harvey, another round of flood poems
In late August, when a large portion of Houston was still a teeming river of floodwater, we asked readers to send us poems about Harvey, Houston and the Gulf Coast. And a wave of people responded — including Houston’s poet laureate, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, who wrote about watching “all that you call home / conveyor into the bayou / bed, by doorframe, by roof,” and Maria Bernal Brietzke, who wrote about the “Mildew nostalgia” that remains. Since then, more readers have sent us their poems. Here’s a sampling. “City Turned to Inland Lake”
it was always a trying place to live soupy summer evenings under hazy orange skies jeans plastered to your thighs tree roots cracking through sidewalk concrete
super allergies caused by toxic pollen
collisions and near misses every day on those twelve lanes of highway paved over prairie land lopsided houses from rapid-swelling soils there’s always a door that won’t shut unless you water your foundation during the drier months gumbo soils too thick to build basements when it rains there is nowhere for the water to go when it rains finally breaking the hot heavy tension
why is it always so violent? cocky pistol-packing roaches swaggering through your kitchen that’s when they aren’t in flying season now even they cling to life floating on a plastic plate through your dining room it’s not the middle of the night lightning bolts and whistling wind shatters of glass and falling trees that changes your life instantaneously
but the gradual rise of water creeping in inch by inch that eats away at you like the slow leaching of corroding pipes the constant drip drip drip gnawing at your very infrastructure
increasingly louder the longer it goes on
it’s the days and days painfully anticipating how high the water will go sleepless nights your brain like cheesecloth as rain seeps through the roof incessant crying, jolting phone alarms
eight tornadoes yesterday fifteen tonight
a subterranean machine-like thudding
from an earth in constant turmoil by daybreak your heavy eyelids don’t know if its dusk or dawn you awake with drunken fatigue to find the crossroads flooded raging muddy waters disobeying submerging the stop sign personal power outages in the hundreds of thousands your interior is shifting on slow motion reel as you helplessly watch sofas and armchairs bob through the living room
like an apprentice’s enchanted buckets and mops
hang the pots and pans from the ceiling place your laptop above the cabinet save the memories try to save the memories
mucky brown waters still rising rising
serpents, sharp objects and cesspool shit now you feel sick a slow dull sinking pit in your leaky leaky gut so much water and none of it drinkable your thirst for clarity, purity is stifling can disinfect the piles of Legos but the books are all soggy, bloated that gunk will never come out of Daddy’s silken ties dump the rotting refrigerator contents all that stuff from Costco’s last run tear it down to the studs a flooded house can never be sold straining to breathe your chest feels pressed by stacks of sandbags trapped beneath fifty-one inches in this city turned to inland lake there aren’t enough resources for this millennial flood deploy the Naval warships you’re normally resilient
good at keeping those flood gates closed
but the dam spilled over for the first time ever unprecedented now paralyzed by your helplessness in this time of crisis you wish you could have been a better protector
how do you even get out, onto the roof to wave your arms for rescue? you left the axe, the ladder in the garage float the kids out on an air mattress carry the baby over your head don’t look the dog in the eyes as you leave him behind “out of calamity... chaos you find what people are made of ” God’s love still shines through a stranger’s smile as he hands you a dry pair of socks fresh bottled water somewhere in a parallel life it’s sunny and seventy-five degrees Heather Jacobsen (first published in “Poets Reading the News”)
“Pinwheel Clouds”
Mesmerized by a flickering television picture
Pinwheel clouds preview the coming hurricane
Crowds clustered at food stores and pharmacies,
Long lines take the last gasoline, water, bread
Governmental emissaries cries to prepare ring hollow
None is really ready for the wrath of rain that comes
Hurricanes seldom come this way so slowly
New people are unaware, the rest of us have forgotten
Television shows the rain comes in increasing heavier waves
Filling our lakes, waterways, golf courses, roads, businesses,
Airports, homes, churches, neighbors, livestock, cars
Washing away our things. Washing way those we love. Harvey was the big one they said would come. Michael Owens, Cypress
“(Untitled)”
Not the sofa, not the stove, Not the bed, I’ll wash the clothes. Leave the floor, don’t cut the walls, Don’t break the cabinets, I’ll keep it all.
You tossed the carpet, but still you press To rid my home of more effects. A little bleach and water, too Will make these trinkets good as new. A spray for mold, a couple fans And pesticide, a couple cans Plus a lot of praying, too Will make this flooded house like new. Kristen Griffiths
“Marked Safe”
The sun came out with a vengeance after the hurricane; illuminated a string
of cars floating in a neighboring ditch.
Many of us experienced survivors guilt:
our houses dry, our loved ones safe.
When we left our homes to cruise the lanes
we always took for granted, we braked
a little longer at the stop signs still in place.
We were desperate for some damning proof
that we’d also been through this. Why
the gesture of a Kroger clerk giving out
free bouquets, allowed our tear drops
to crest like bayous flooding miles away. Saba Husain