To prepare for the hurricane,
you must gather the batteries,
especially the AA and big fat D packs.
You must wash every scrap of clothing.
You must fill every crevice and container with water,
including the rusty tub and old gallon jugs.
You must take your hard-earned cash from the bank
and hope that your money magically lasts
until the next check appears.
You must cook all of the meat
and say farewell to your milk and eggs.
Well, they were bad for your health, anyway.
You must fill up both cars with gas
and return to the station to fill three red containers.
You can never have too much gas, you know.
You must buy sheets of wood and nail them over the windows.
You must tie the doors with rope and weights.
You must bring your plants, mosaic tables, and chairs inside.
You must check your email and leave a response:
I’ll be away from my correspondence, due to Hurricane María.
You must watch your favorite show and listen to the classics.
It will be a while, until you will have these sounds again.
You must gather your important papers
and protect them with plastic Ziploc baggies.
You must find your earplugs to block out
the competing noise from the neighbors’ generators.
You must make friends with the neighbors.
If you are nice, maybe they will give you some food
or water later or even let you run an extension cord
to have some power from their generator.
You must say goodbye to vanity,
since you will no longer be able to blow dry
your hair or press your clothes.
You must fasten this list to memory and then pray,
until you hear it is finished.
This poem first appeared in Havik and In Inheritance of Drowning.
—
Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), which was a finalist for theWhirling Prize and reviewed by Publishers Weekly. She is an eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net finalist, Best New Poets nominee, Cave Canem Poetry Prize Semifinalist, Obsidian Fellow, Poetry Editor at The Hopper, and Full Professor at the University of Puerto Rico. Her work appears in Literary Hub, Poets.org, and The Los Angeles Review.
