WRECK AGE

by Alejandro Escudé





“The public needs to prepare for unimaginable information about the death toll and the human suffering.” —Bahamas Health Minister Dr. Duane Sands.


You shall prepare for the unimaginable.
The unimaginable tree that you will use
To construct a boat. The lighting that will strike
You as you’re falling into the pit. What pit?
You imagine that too, though it’s unimaginable.
Food can’t be imagined, unless one is a child.
And neither can healthcare, again,
Unless one remembers playing doctor.
You can’t imagine another planet, can you?
Another President with larger, more capable hands?
A car is a figment of the imagination, a flying car
To rescue you from your home, as it floats
Upon the sea. Wreckage is medieval marginalia—
You can use wreckage to make a poster,
As you might use macaroni to make art.
Can you imagine a stronger heart
To support the death you can’t imagine?
The death that begins on the unimaginable horizon,
Where dark clouds meet the rising sea,
Whispering, then shouting, then screaming
For help from the unimaginable authorities
Flying in on their helicopters, which are nothing
More than dragonflies, hovering above
A shallow pond, and the inundated world below.


Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

THE COME-ALONG

by Richard Garcia

  

For you will be lifted up. For you will be thrown down.                                                                   Frank X. Gaspar, 'September Tropical'

The eye of the storm is turning towards us, the wheel of Biblical wind approaches, and my wife is watching a YouTube video, instructions on how to use the come-along, and she says, Come along with me, watch this, and don't place your forehead down on the table and roll your head back-and-forth, as if you were saying, What has she done now. And the tall man in the plaid shirt says, don't get your fingers caught in the gears of the come-along. And I get it: what if you have to drag the water-logged sofa across the floor of your living room and it's too heavy? You have the come-along. What if your generator, filled with gas and potentially explosive, is too heavy to lift over the flooded lawn and plug into the mysterious socket? You have the come-along. So this is how the Egyptians built the pyramids. They had Hebrew slaves and many come-alongs. This is how the Aztecs built those temples. They did not have wheels, they did not have gears, but they had tortillas and they were round, and the bite marks along a crusted edge of tortilla would suggest to them the gears of the come-along. The come-along—this is how we will ride out the storm, my love and I. This is how we will drag ourselves, drag our house, drag our dog Max—one chain attached to a tree, one chain attached to our house, both chains attached to the come-along—click by ratchety click, across the swirling, god-driven hurricane, to higher ground. 

Richard Garcia is the author of The Other Odyssey from Dream Horse Press, The Chair from BOA, and Porridge from Press 53. His poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. He has won a Pushcart prize and has been in Best American Poetry. He lives in Charleston, S.C.