DOTS OF TOWNS MONTHS AFTER HURRICANES HARVEY AND IRMA

by Sister Lou Ella Hickman

Storm-damaged Rockport, Texas homes are seen in this Sunday, Aug. 25, 2017 aerial photo. Mortgage delinquency rates soared in September and October in many of the coastal and other cities flooded by Harvey, including Houston, Beaumont and Corpus Christi, according to new data from real estate analytics company CoreLogic. —San Antonio Express-News, January 15, 2018

of course, there will be long, massive work
for big names like
houston and miami    however rubble
is also rubble in the dots of towns
with their downed trees and power lines
roofs sheared off   walls that caved
these are the invisible ones living between and around bigness
dots of towns in a litany of counties
               that lost schools, citrus groves, hole in the wall cafes
               that didn’t make the news
               the question now
               will the police officers, librarians, butchers, teachers and bakers  go elsewhere
               or will they like some of the volunteer firemen decide to stay
               after all, this is where we grew up
               our children were born
               and where we go to church
               the dots of town must dig deep
               among the rubble for their just reason for staying

Sister Lou Ella Hickman is a poet, writer, and spiritual director. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines such as First Things, Emmanuel, Third Wednesday, and TheNewVerse.News. Her first book of poetry was entitled she: robed and wordless. Sister Lou Ella lives 45 minutes from Rockport, Texas, one of the small towns devastated by Hurricane Harvey that may never recover.

CHASING THE AMERICAN DREAM

by Lind Grant-Oyeye

“Unpresidented,” by Sue Cole at the Galerie St. Etienne via The New Yorker, January 1, 2017

Forty thousand [immigrants] had come [to the U.S. since January] from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office. —The New York Times, December 23, 2017

Some day, a hut hurting someplace—
from creaked bolts, jolts and thunder bolts
may find sunshine, side by side the spire
of Mar-a-Largo—a dream.

After the settling of rain, hurricanes and all,
then would they embrace what is left
of the saltiness of seas and foreign sand left
on shore or savor jointly, the after taste of sea weed.

After the atmosphere has rested from pouring rain,
side by side still, they will behold clearly the combined smiles
of gods which used to hide behind layers and layers
of pretentious stratopheric ozone—

After the smiling of gods,
side by side still, they will pour out whatever soot is left
in their bellies as contrite offerings to the gods—
the joint confessional and thanksgiving of immigrant houses,
made welcome.


Lind Grant-Oyeye, a winner of the Universal Human Rights Student Network human rights poetry award, was born in Nigeria. She has work in several literary magazines world wide.

A STORM IN A TEACUP

by Alina Rios

Storm by Juliana Coutinho

Darkness dances
at the bottom of my tea cup,
darker than my Earl Grey amber—
a storm if you read the signs.

The Getty shuts its eyes to the fire-
and-smoke-breathing beast
awakened by Santa Anas.

A man on a bridge in Kentucky
takes his life to the chorus of #metoos
kept silent too long.

A madman at the wheel
of my adopted country’s beat-up bus
drives through hurricanes
and political theater, losing people,
as if the bus’s bottom were his hands,
child’s clumsy hands,
and we’re sand flowing through
into the anonymous
forever of the beach.

Nobody sleeps. Or
nobody sleeps well.
We wake in the night
from dreams of buildings falling,
weapon-wielding children, dead-ends.

The air is electric, Christmas cheer
not a match for it.
If you’re awake, you know. The crows know.
They gather murders over the Capitol.

My tea is cold and darker now.
I drink it up.


Alina Rios is an immigrant and a dreamer. She spent the first part of her life in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now lives in Seattle with her 9-year old son and a ghost-cat. Her poetry has appeared in CrossWinds Poetry Journal, Camroc Press Review, Rust and Moth, and other fine places. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Bracken Magazine.