After Hurricane María, you spin in a daze—
punch-drunk from the fetid fumes of the generator,
but you have made a decision to eat, live.
You leap onto a dark tan bra that
is wildly flapping on the clothesline,
eager to gather something sweet
and bring it to the surface.
And yet, there is nothing there but a
bare circle of cotton.
You wonder how the hurricane galloped away
with the flowers, triggering a vanishing act.
Well, where is the magician’s wand
to bring back the canopy of blossoms?
It must be in the wind of loss,
along with the why and because.
There is no way to tell you
about the aftermath’s slow cruelty;
it is a tale that claws cell by cell,
leaving wings to litter this earth.
This poem first appeared in Claw & Blossom 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. Literary Hub, Poets.org, and The Los Angeles Review have published her work.
