The dust comes over from the Sahara, sings nightly in
an Arabic that cloaks
red the sunset. It’s hope in
dispersal, refraction an antique ruby set in Gulfcoast gold.
Between it and the wildfire particulate, they’re hard to separate.
The price of plywood
skyrockets when we speculate.
Cape Verdean seas begin their slow churn over a weathered pearl, seek
nucleation, originate
sedimentary inclusions. It is June, after all. And it is hotter than
ever.
El/La
Niño/a
Who the fuck knows?
That’s where our tax dollars are supposed to go.
Last time, Eric and Laura sheltered at work. In the lashing dark, their limbs
clambered for purchase like the splintering oaks downtown – one used once for a
public hanging. (No, not the lynching tree, which was years ago dead, slow, slow,
slow, with that 1924 lead.
I know an old-timer with a piece by his bed.) I don’t know what The Daughters do
with the bust of Lee in a storm. Surely there are bylaws. Nine months later, our
young couple’s daughter was not called Irma. No one is anymore.
As the continents
continue their drift by sky, I
wonder about those birds caught up in the eye.
If they ever made it home.
I feel the loss of them
I feel the loss of something
Maybe they earned
a new last name. Carolinensis sounds nice.
Repatriation
through nomenclature. Not the usual
migration route, but I’m about
ready to take it.
We owe everything to Africa:
hurricanes and the dust to hold them down. The footprints of our mitochondrial matrilineage. Original
Eden, creation from destruction. Stone born of
the first water, cycling quantum. And how we swim today in the aquifer.
The silky Bedouin haze of a second
ruddy sunrise asks: How many dunes are
lost an ocean away? as I test the generator
The pantry
stocked, gas in the sedan, I want to start
to climb.
Pointillist stabs of daylight punctuate
tin-snipped crags of remembered mountain,
the sunrise rays of clarion trumpet, a foreign
mouth spilling honeyed religion, singing
home
through all the signs,
saffron heraldry
singing
Evacuation Route
singing
One Way Out
barked through a bullhorn
All emergency services will be suspended for
those who defy the orders
Singing
north
in two languages
(even in escape, we
forget the Haitians)The black block-faced arrow
resembles a National Guardsman roadside
Our spray paint
can labeled
Looters will be shot. On the outside,
I’d
bet, we’ve got two weeks.
It’s five p.m.
in Florida, and
the thunder panics the distance. Here it comes
at last: the first rain. And what the
hell, amen. May it put
the fires out.
Originally from Massachusetts, Sara Comito lives in Florida. Her poem Sky marks downtown Fort Myers for the Saw Palm literary map project, Places to Stand. Her poetry, prose poems, and fiction have been featured in such journals as Nixes Mate Review, Pithead Chapel, Ghost Parachute, Defenestration, and Drunk Monkeys. Her work will be part of the Bridging Divides anthology by Pirene’s Fountain in 2020. Find her on Twitter @comito_writes.