Independence Day / Matthew Guenette

I can picture my mother
after waitressing forever
            reading the entrails
                        of her apron. 
            In a hushed voice she says:
I’m halfway through my thirty day diet
& already I’ve lost fifteen days.
            In the bleachers
                        at the ballgame on TV
someone who looks like
            my father with a mustache
& tan has his arm
                      around another woman.
            In a kitchen
six shades of dusk my mother
beautiful & clairvoyant
            burns the fish-sticks
                        in a skirt of smoke.
                                    When my father comes home
                        she’s holding the lamp
like a hammer.  She says
she feels enlightened.

Hurricane Party / Alison Pelegrin

No way in hell the sky would do me wrong.
Even with the weatherman keening 
in his yellow slicker, it just doesn’t sink in.

Plywood, shrimp boots, sandbags, and booze.
Stuck in line at the hardware store, 

pancakes for dinner after schools close early.
Before landfall, before the water comes
and anyone gets hurt,

                                      it’s always fun—
chanting the alphabet of named storms
that never harmed besides a muck mosaic
in the streets,

                      the waterline’s footprint
a jagged hem of leaves on the lawn.

Taping the windows, packing 
for a midnight exodus, our map
the lava flow of headlights. In the car—
pillows, a coffee can for pee,
and Michael, row the boat ashore.

The aggravation makes the worst you’ve heard
seem not so bad, not even boating 
from rooftop to rooftop after Betsy, 

or cousin Chancy in the crook of a tree
delivered by a voice speaking out of the light:
         Over here—dis child, he cold.

Is it chance, or is God listening when I beg
to be passed over, for someone to take my place
ripping up carpets and breathing the stench
of minnows shriveled on concrete?

Cameron Parish, Yucatan Peninsula,
the whole of Florida, Dominican Republic—
apologies for the times my blessings 
have arrived at your expense—

a feast of outage-thawed seafood,
the easy work of peeling tape
from crossed-off windows, 

         each pane scraped clean
a day the calendar is giving back.

Poem originally appeared in Barn Owl Review