Tuesday poem #543 : Terri Witek : Hurricane Sons

 

 

 

 

12 hours to.  My dead son sighs as I empty him.   My live son drops chairs in the dark.  Arrived:  toxic squads  of AAAs.   A picture frame, floating.

 

Power poles.  0            o

Closeness to house (sequence of proportional circles)

0              camphor tree

00.           loquat--- loquat---- avocado

       .              fig

 

 

My generator son needs special mix. My strap son bangs bookcase to wall.  May the tattooing begin: a snake saves his garden, rounds from my sons’ shoulders down.   Later will lighten. 

 

 

       (      )        water oak (neighbor 1)

       (      )       water oak (neighbor 2)

       .                small live oak

 

 

Avocado?   40 feet from its stem.  Then opera: 1. chittering titmice.  2. cicadas. 3. silence   My heat stroke son asks if there’s room for his dog.  My adrenaline son buys weatherstripping with cash.  3 plants ask me not to drag them inside. 

 

Insurance asks: what else is green?   Thready spines.  French waterways, mapped: 1850-1862.  Circulation of goods on.  A cashier asks me to fetch her a loaf of bread.  Me alone with 2 boys in the dark, she explains.  Propane from a bait shop.  

 

 

boundary 1:             (     )               (    )
                                   water oak     water oak

boundary 2:            .              .               .                .              .

                                   loquat---loquat----loquat---loquat----loquat

 

Ice.  Ice.     My neighbor asks if we’re religious, if trees weep when we cut them.  The avocado calls down its brothers. Everything matters, says my dead son’s phone.  An ant staggers past
as a neighbor’s windows depart, blanked by board.     Last garbage pick-up, last paper.     My live  son toasts: 1. blue skies. 2.  Clink. 

Closed eyes, dark rain.  Can’t take you in, I say to my dead son, furiously stalled.  Cats multiply, snake through the house.  I throw up channels.    I double-void.    What’s it take to get home, trees beg my roof.

 

/////        

 

 

 

 

Terri Witek is the author of 8 books of poetry: Something’s Missing in This Museum is the latest  (2023). Her work has  been featured in two  international anthologies: JUDITH: Women Making Visual Poetry (2021), and in the WAAVe Global Anthology of women’s asemic writing and visual poetry (2021).  Witek teaches Poetry in the Expanded Field with Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes in Stetson University’s MFA of  the Americas, and their work together has been shown nationally and internationally, most recently at ARCO in Madrid.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan