What I need from you is not to be here
when I try to write. I look at the keys
on the ash tree, pray: A mom is a spear
as well as a seed. Which is why each “Please!”,
each suit to play, gets tuned out. Did you know
in less than ten years’ time The Big One’s set
to hit? Your rocks book makes it all sound so
far-off: no note of fear, of plan, of sweat,
no thought as to your art we still keep taped
to walls. Now the ground gives way. Deep waves spread,
oust frames. I have tied your shoes. I have mapped
our path out of this plunged town. In my head
the two plates scrape and scrape. Never mind
downed lines. I’d carry you if I had to.
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Alicia Rebecca Myers has published poetry and nonfiction in FIELD, Creative Nonfiction, Best New Poets, Entropy, The Rumpus, and jubilat. Her chapbook of poems, My Seaborgium, was selected as a winner of the inaugural Mineral Point Chapbook Series.
Satellite images by Sotiris Valkaniotis / Google Earth / DigitalGlobe depicting before-and-after of the magnitude 7.1 Ridgecrest earthquake of July 5.
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