The Flood by Holly Day

Jakarta Flood by International Rivers

The coffins float to the surface
like rebellious architecture, buoyed by the floodwaters
that have shaken everything loose. We pass sandbags
hand over hand to build a wall between us and the river
shouting panicked instructions to the trucks to bring more.

The water pouring in from the river is frigid and cold
numbing ankles and hands, but the water
running off of the bloated cemetery is warm, as though the water
is carrying the last breath and embrace of the dead
across the grounds to keep us from freezing.

*****

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry collections are In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press),  A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit.net), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), and Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), while her newest nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies and Tattoo FAQ.

One Day by James B. Nicola

The subtle aggregation of the years
is brought to light as sudden as the day
the couple arrives. Unnecessary things amassed
like popcorn kernels sitting on a flame:
occasionally, then regularly, and then
a steamy, thrilling bursting to a climax
just short of an explosion, the pot overbrimmed
right before the flame went off. Among which they find:

Paperweights and porcelains.
Kitchen gizmos, their use a mystery;
     refrigerator coated in quilts of magnets.
Figurines of elephants, giraffes,
     pink pigs and piglets, orange orangutans.
Gold-lettered cups and over-painted eggs.
Mementos of excursions unrecalled.
Walls frame to frame and shelf on spilling shelf,
     all corners hutched by corner hutches, snug.
Ceilings ribanded and dressed
     in hooks and pegboards, unrelieved reliefs.
No room but room she’d make—she always
     managed somehow for beloved things.

She could have eaten better, but the change,
as I said, was subtle, as her things took over.
Now she lies in a fetal fervor on the floor
lower than her credenzas, full of things
unknown surrounded by the known, which have visibly
fallen like plastic hailstones around her frame;
they’ll never melt, and so must be removed.
She looks like a gardener in love with flowers,
who decided to take a nap one day in spring
in a flowerbed, never to wake up.

The wife hangs up the phone to silence its tone.
The husband closes a window. There must have been
a wind, he says as he starts to move the things
nearest his grandmother—or will, one day.

*****

James B. Nicola was published several times in mgversion2>datura—which is proudly featured on the acknowledgments page of his second, third, fourth, and fifth full-length poetry collections, and will be again in his sixth. Born: Worcester, Mass. Lives: New York City. sites.google.com/site/jamesbnicola.