Surviving the Flood

I

Arkansas and Tennessee in 1927

 

The Dakotas and Nebraska in 1993

 

Grandma on the roof, muddy cane and goodbye

 

Farms becoming reservoirs of mud

 

State Farm and Allstate prepping commercials

 

Waters recede along with college plans

 

Soybeans and hope are planted again

 

Bismarck shelters and Omaha warehouses can house orphans one more day

 

 

 

II

 

 

Katrina’s howls break levees

 

Sharecropper’s grandkids become just more shit in the deluge

 

Like a stillborn refusing to die in the muck between the debris

 

Slippery balance finds a buried peace in relocation and zoning variances

 

A flyover shows death as something beautiful

 

A child finds the body of her mother and sings a lullaby

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

III

 

 

Joni sings about a river she’d like to skate away on

 

Maybe the same one Huck and Jim took as they lit out

 

Currents of fear explode into a flood of rage

 

Torn roots are gathered to tear skin, break bone

 

Becoming the mortar of our walls

 

America becomes a place to escape from

 

Children in tents and cement rooms cry

 

Watering a battered nation needing to be baptized

 

Again

Glenn Moss

Glenn Moss is a media lawyer by trade and has been been writing poetry, stories and plays since high school in Brooklyn. He went to Binghamton University, where he wrote a five act play for a course in Jacobean Literature. That experience encouraged him to continue writing, and in law school at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, he wrote a play for a course in Jurisprudence. Returning to NYC and a life in law and family, he continued to write poetry and stories amidst contracts and business plans. He believes that each area of writing is enriched by the other, with even contracts benefiting from a bit of poetic dance. He has poems and stories published in Ithaca Lit, West Trade Review, Oddville Press, 34th Parallel and Oberon Magazine.

Contributions by Glenn Moss