DEDICATED TO THE UNKNOWN: A HURRICANE MARKER FOR LIFE OR DEATH

by Susan Terris

KBTX, September 27, 2024

Florida’s venomous snakes:

Her mother gave her a marker to put

Name & birthdate on her torso

 

She promised   swore they'd be all right

Today is not all right   She’s not okay

Her mother’s missing   ghostly   gone

 

In a glass she stares at ink-black ink

Backwards & snake-less

Remembers how stupid it seemed

 

Where is she now this day when she

Has not seen even one killer snake

Who is she now    and who can she be

Susan Terris is a freelance editor and the author of 8 books of poetry, 17 chapbooks, 3 artist's books, 2 plays.  Journals include The Southern Review, Georgia Review,Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Blackbird, Swwim, and Ploughshares. Poems of hers have appeared in Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry. Spring 2024, her eighth poetry book Green Leaves, Unseeing was published by Marsh Hawk Press, May 2024. Ms. Terris is editor emerita of Spillway & an editor at Pedestal.

HELENE

by Terri Kirby Erickson

Cadaver dogs and search crews trudged through knee-deep muck and debris in the mountains of western North Carolina on Tuesday looking for more victims ofHurricane Helene days after the storm carved a deadly and destructive path through the Southeast. —AP, October 1, 2024

He found his wife’s body draped over

a limb, her skirt flapping in the wind

 

like a bedsheet pinned to a line, her

long hair hanging like Spanish moss.

 

He dropped to his knees in the mud,

moaning like a bear caught in a steel

 

trap, ready to gnaw off its leg to stop 

the pain. He didn’t care, anymore,

 

about their splintered house floating 

like matchsticks down the river, never

 

felt the dog’s rough tongue trying to 

lick the agony from his face. Still, he

 

could not make himself believe what 

he was seeing—pictured her, instead, 

 

walking down the aisle with flowers 

tumbling from her hands. He vaguely

recalled saying to her, Till death do us 

part, but it tasted like gibberish in his 

 

mouth, words with no meaning about 

a time he was sure would never come.

Author's Note: My poem, ‘Helene,’ is an imagined narrative prompted by reading and hearing about the devastating destruction and loss of life in western North Carolina (my beloved home state) that occurred as a result of Hurricane Helene. I also drew upon my own experiences with trauma, grief, and sudden loss while writing this poem.

 

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of seven collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in Asheville Poetry Review, Rattle, The SUN, and numerous other publications. Her awards include the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, International Book Award for Poetry, and the Annals of Internal Medicine Poetry Prize among many others. She lives in North Carolina, USA.