It’s too early for the new hurricane season, yet warnings flood my phone. New Orleans’ tug boat bellows blocks away. Amid the paleness of morning mimosas, the bedpost anchors. Storm alerts confirm: hurricane is headed our way. But I’m already cracking crab legs and contemplating eleven years of marriage. Of what no longer holds a charge. A text interrupts: “Your stepfather’s health is deteriorating quickly.” My stepfather’s neighbor “just wants me to know.” How it always returns to small cubes of raw fish placed before us, oil’s admiration for the surface of things, daughters who slowly stop kissing goodbye. What is goodbye when Facebook chooses memories to return to me? We push on, down damp streets, scent of urine on brick. Sax notes rising up like my blister, shiny as lighting— none of which will photo. At the street corner, an upturned bucket sticks out its tongue to become a drum, pounding us to another place: past trips with other downpours that laughed, that ducked. Is this marriage, or is it raining again? My mother texts “Don’t worry, relax,” so we pose a video, scoff at cocktails in neon plastic penises, praise weathered flamingo-pink shutters, ignore what shutters do when they’re shut, when they’re screwed, the storm’s percussive wanting in and in.
Charlotte Pence’s most recent book of poetry, Code, received the 2020 Book of the Year award from APS. Her first book of poems, Many Small Fires, which received an INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award from Foreword Reviews, explores her father’s chronic homelessness while simultaneously detailing the physiological changes that enabled humans to form cities, communities, and households. A graduate of Emerson College and UT Knoxville, she now directs the Stokes Center for Creative Writing.
10/4 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Raina J. León / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
10/4 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Raina J. León and local poet Susannah Winters Simpson / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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What a stunning poem to begin my week!! Thank you, dear SWWIMer curators/lifeboats! Onward!
I'm really drawn into the setting of this poem and its building tension. Congratulations, Charlotte Pence!