It’s called edge collapse:
Roots have nothing to hold onto.
Ghost trees enclose the living
on a ridge, outside, moving in,
on islands all over the Gulf,
one thousand abandoned oil rigs.
The city tip-toes
here and there. Our children
learn from books, cartoons
and nature-bathing tours
of re-claimed golf courses.
Of course, there are mistakes:
their confusion grows
like grapes. Our city sprawls
as if along a vine.
Skyscrapers
like ghost trees.
Flat city
prone in flashes,
when it floods the land alters itself
with cars too impatient
for the rain to pass. What I mean is
that people aren’t paralyzed by fear,
but what I really mean is
they think they’ve worked hard
enough they should be able to buy up all
the bad weather and dump it
outside the city, a reservoir
when it’s not soccer fields.
Crush and extract. Settle
and clarify. We start vineyards,
manage forests, build schools
where children hide.
Mandala-like, sand shifts
along the beach, whatever pattern
it makes will not last.
Maps are like this too:
you think you know what shape
your country disappearing will take.
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller was most recently Digital Nonfiction Editor at Gulf Coast; newer poetry appears in or is forthcoming from Brooklyn Rail and Poet Lore. Currently he work as a community college tutor, a weekend back desk attendant for the Menil Collection, and a creative writing instructor for children (poetry) and seniors (memoir).