Ode to the Tropical Storm I Slept Through
Nestor, you’re as quiet as plankton, as dust.
The Gulf you call Daddy drinks more up,
and tells you, show them your rage, boy.
You want to give the earth sugar and glitter,
but it’s lost to your own gusts.
Hide with me under the bed comforter.
If there were a green screen behind my back
in my dreams, I’d point to where you are sparing
us, staying small, refusing to lead yourself
chest first
into the blank meat of shore.
You found a map,
but someone spilled brine all over it,
and you can’t read the names of the places
you’re supposed to go.
Your birthright: all water,
no clarity. You, born alone,
your first words, inaudible as God’s.
The gulls cheer on your first steps,
or is that the sound of them fleeing you?
You are not a real boy,
my love of whispers
and drizzle,
but you are as alive as anyone
who’s slept beside me.
Weakling, I wake and need you stronger
and here.
Where’d you disperse?
I Grant Myself One Night Free from Worry
I have been afraid for seventy-two days, haven’t
watered my plants in so long, dragging
on convincing myself I’m dying, tilting like petals
hoping to kiss their big crush (the concrete)
as it buckles with heat, because worry
is a kind of heat, and I’ve forgotten to thank
the drunk goddess whose tangled hair I used
to weave myself into a doll, myself
this voodoo-looking thing I remember
was once made happy with water and sunlight
and time, and tonight I have water
and time. The intake and output of air
can become a perfect square, and this
room I sit in with a bath-marked,
dog-eared book is a perfect square, and I am
the millisecond in the song right before
crescendo, the pause between heartbeat
or breath, the da and dum, the I and am,
an infinity that grazes the air like a slurry
of bubbles from a plastic wand held
to wind by someone who helps you love spring.
Brett Hanley is a Poetry Editor for Southeast Review. She holds an MFA from McNeese State and is a PhD candidate at Florida State. Her work is forthcoming or has recently been published in River Styx, Gulf Coast, Puerto del Sol, Yemassee, the minnesota review, Juked, Crab Creek Review, Underblong, North American Review, and Hotel Amerika. American Poetry Journal recently published her debut chapbook, Defeat the Rest.
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