Julie Weiss
Julie Weiss is the author of The Places We Empty, and two chapbooks, The Jolt and Breath Ablaze: Twenty-One Love Poems in Homage to Adrienne Rich, Volumes I and II. Her second collection, Rooming with Elephants, is forthcoming in 2025. “Poem Written in the Eight Seconds I Lost Sight of My Children” was selected as a 2023 finalist for Best of the Net, and she won Sheila-Na-Gig´s editor´s choice award for “Cumbre Vieja.” New work is forthcoming in Burningword Journal, Eunoia Review, Gyroscope Review, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. She lives in Spain. You can find her at https://www.julieweisspoet.com/.
What the Flood Carried
Not rain, not always.
The sky over some towns,
sly as a lover who slinks
into bed after dark. Serene
yet reeking of catastrophe.
The colossal rush of mud,
wood, streetlights, benches,
garbage bins, shop façades,
big rigs, like a thousand lies
unleashed in under a minute
as people worked or sent
emojis or bought oranges
or guided children to cars
not built to withstand walls
of water, or perform acrobatics.
A bridge that joined two
neighborhoods, nudged off
its legs as if DANA had hips
and a grievance. Four bodies
in a parking garage floating
among drowned vehicles, debris,
memories of family road trips
submerged in sludge. A region
layered in absolute darkness.
Dead phone lines. Ghostly dog
howls. Screams for help that could
crack ice caps. The stench of absence
where homes, businesses, schools
once stood. How wrong we were
to think our planet ́s language
included a word for remorse.
The flood carried other things, too.
A red alert that came half a day
too late. A local president
who was cozied up in the corner
of a restaurant with a journalist,
“incommunicado” while his
constituents balanced on car
roofs, clutched window bars,
bedsheets, strangers ́ slippery
hands. A mockery of politicians
who bickered and blamed
each other like teens in a tiff
but didn ́t send help, while
people ́s loved ones were swept
down the final aisle of their lives.
Indignation. Just ask the two
brothers who didn ́t have time
to eat dinner before the swell
wrested them out of their high
chairs. Ask their father, who
grasped a palm tree for hours,
wailing they were my world!
I couldn ́t hold on to them.
*DANA is a Spanish acronym for “high-altitude isolated depression
