AFTER DROUGHT IN CENTRAL OREGON

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.

BROODING STILL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

Eva Millwood holds Brood X cicadas on her property in South Knoxville in this photo at Hellbender Press.

Who recalls Brood X cicadas today, after Hurricane Ida,

earthquake in Southern Haiti, flight of refugees and US military

from Afghanistan? What about the deranged Sri Lankan who

knifed six people in an Auckland supermarket? They have not

expired I read, thank God. Meanwhile, Uncle Gratien went off

to the shade with thousands of others this week in the pandemic.

So how to take stock, to sift through losses: eleven drowned

in New York City basements as Ida roared past, twenty odd

their lungs filled in cars and basements, crushed by trees

in New Jersey, and then in Louisiana, millions without power,

hundreds without homes, various bodies but miracle of miracles,

the reinforced levees of New Orleans held. But then the next

question, for how much longer? And where are sump pumps

today in Home Depot? Can we make sense, God, of these

disparate violations, punishments by wind, fire and tectonic

plates? Yes, I forgot there are thousands of acres and some houses

burning in California. So back towards the future. Where are Brood X

cicadas now, and have they turned into Brood X1? Are they ready

to fly 17 years early just in case the globe cannot cope and needs

another miracle to keep its head above water, above the fire line.

Indran Amirthanayagam produced a “world" record in 2020 by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He has just published Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). He writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Haitian Creole and has twenty poetry books as well as a music album Rankont Dout. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.

HURRICANE WATCH, NEW ORLEANS

by Gail White

Mon., Aug. 30: Children watch reporters at a building collapse scene in New Orleans. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Someday only the divers

will visit New Orleans.

The church bells will ring under water.

Kelp will encircle the rusting wrought iron

like Mardi Gras beads.

The round-eyed fish will roam free

with no one to cook them with almonds.

Drinks are not on the house now, but under the sea.

Politics cause no fights. Who wins doesn’t matter.

The artists are gone. The rich and the homeless are gone.

The old jazz musicians have shut up their instrument cases

I will be one of the few to remember the days

of white-powdered beignets and coffee at Jackson Square,

and Jackson himself on a rearing horse tipping his hat.

And the bells of St. Louis Cathedral

will ring for mass under the sea.

Gail White is a formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her most recent collections are Asperity Street and Catechism. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats.