Michael Minassian
Michael Minassian is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, and A Matter of Timing are all available on Amazon. A new chapbook, Jack Pays a Visit, was released in 2022. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com
THE NEXT HURRICANE
Preparing for a Cat 3 storm,
I helped my neighbor
board up his windows;
he asked me later
if I was Italian or Jewish,
but when I told him no,
Armenian, he nodded as if
it was another piece of bad news.
Overhead, a flock of geese
flew in a tight V formation
dropping brown and white
turds on the roofs
across the street,
see what I mean? he asked,
It’s going to be a shitstorm.
But that was ten years ago,
he and his wife long gone,
their house repossessed;
another family living there now,
hurricane-shy,
leaving their shutters up
all year long.
I fall asleep with the radio on,
dream of a chiseled distance,
sift for clues in the sand;
somewhere cartographers
draw new boundaries,
storms gather off shore—
the weather reported
in a series of metaphors:
spaghetti paths,
cone of uncertainty,
the mother of all storms.
I’ll call the next one Medusa,
wait for winter, turn to stone.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 