Galveston, Texas, September 1900
no radar no text alert no shouting down the mouthpiece
the leaden gray clouds foaming on the horizon grown fat and delirious
on Cuba are about to swallow us
no CNN camera on the corner of Broadway records the parade
of six-foot waves mules and cart swimming past the Grande Hotel
the freight train overhead tearing up roofs beneath its heels
no Android to video Father and his Negro handyman throw a mattress
against the door put their weight behind it muffle the bangs
of a horde of bill collectors
thousands of little devils whistle past carrying Miss Wilson’s piano
Mother hatchets holes in the floor to stop the waters
lifting away the house
if we could we’d message our cousins facetime the nuns in the orphanage
in another round of ‘Queen of the Waves’ the children tied to them
with clothesline singing till the dorms collapse
* * *
no selfie of Uncle Jerry outside our house wrapped in curtains
asking for clothes no GPS to tell us in this town of splinters
which damn street we’re on
no sonar to reveal who lies beneath the rubble neighbors dangling
from branches like mistletoe like shredded ribbon
are easier to spy
Father is fed on goblets of whisky to sift the wreckage
his handyman to load the bodies onto barges
for burial at sea
the tide washes them back on shore no pics posted
of the giant bonfire built on the beach no emojis
for the smell
Charles G Lauder, Jr, was born and raised in Texas and has lived in the UK since 2000. His poems have appeared internationally and his debut collection, The Aesthetics of Breath, was published in 2019 by V.Press.
