shielded from torrential downpour I count each privilege
in the rain the mailman with the bad knee runs up our
stairs to deliver corporate marketing I sit in my
comfort watching heavy mist float float off the parked
cars and wonder as the sidewalk’s sea level
rises is this a flash flood? then it lets up when it
resumes intensity I wonder if this is hurricane weather
this is Pittsburgh this is no hurricane though Laura
makes her journey up the Gulf Coast another storm in
a sky of storms I observe seemingly unlimited
(originally published in Poetica, Spring 2024)
hurricane
Dream with Hurricane
Florida’s coast the horizon gunmetal
and the gales drive me into a house
where I ramble in garbled non sequiturs
about God highways marijuana to a cop
whose intent is to arrest me but he says
he does not have the authority yet
I say you’ll get there then after
the wreckage the cop works as a clerk
in the city’s only shelter I ask
if there’s room and he says not yet
(originally published in Hollow Tongue, Spring 2018)
Hurricane, 2017
The whole year has been hurricane season
in this nation of bayous haunted by ghosts
of cowboys shooting bullets into the clouds,
gunsmoke in the air, then a disaster of rain.
Save us, God, from these dark clouds looming–
there are too many more bodies to save.
(originally published in The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Summer 2019)