Coming Storm

fleeced inside the cell, undefined violence flashes purple.
still chain-smoking on his balcony as windows close for bed,
the new neighbor, a slapping flag, a Marine retiree vanity plate.
I know the barometric plunge, whipping white the maple leaves.
he snaps beer tabs, snaps at a family unseen, snaps at his dog.
lightning takes a long time lacing its boots downriver to us.
he’s not much older than me, and how I remember Fallujah,
old men and boys crying on the curb, the forbidden from leaving,
who never left. and rags after. low-res red. phosphorous Pompeii.
does he still feel under-boot the crushed chalk bone, insensible
explosions wherever he goes? snapping. memory a flash bang.
from my bedroom I monitor the first-degree face, mulch-pile
chest smoking uncontrollably, turned by pitchfork, drifting
wind over water. the storm rolls in on caissons of thunder.

*

February 14

I lay on the floor trying to unhear screams, the city
screaming into its elbows to stifle what it knows.
The neighbors rise fighting, and I’m afraid
to seek answers to the questions I have. Google,
can AR-15 bullets pierce a brick wall? How
do hiding mothers keep their children quiet?
Is the screaming in my middle ear or a fold
of nervous tissue? Is it me? Is it only me?
Car doors slam and engines ignite and I remain
on the floor, keeping close to the world without
beds, those born and born again shivering pink
each morning waiting to receive spring’s augurs.
Geese shadows labor over the window so low
I hear their wings threshing. None cry out.

*

Two-star Hotel, Myrtle Beach

look I don’t want to catch anything
don’t want to kill the ocean
creatures, only stare at my feet
for hours, collecting beautiful bones

be first, or fiftieth, to comb the dawn
beach while the water’s out
taking care of its salty business
is that too much to ask?

a domestic situation ends in handcuffs
pleas break the boardwalk
crowd outside the Bermuda Sands
but the lazy river goes on

Black & Milds in the kiddie pool, sandy beds
I rate this hotel five stars for the riff-raff
for they come by it honestly, no bugs
in my room— no, spiders do not count

barnacles barnacle, I shell shells, terns turn
over a pink plastic carnation decoy
bright as sushi, what once was
a revolution, plastic, now an island

in a vortex visible from space
how must it loom to turtles below
a jellyfish or ominous mushroom
cloud, the manmade tropical depression

named for each of us in time,
we’re attached to our disasters
if not multitudes, we contain
teaspoons of colorful beads

in our brains, micro-plastic’d, sad,
bedraggled as the streets after Mardi Gras
a man in the lazy river laughs like a cough
or coughs like a laugh, what’s the difference

at rock-bottom, where the party is a sickness
the sickness is a party

*

Edie Meade is a writer in Petersburg, Virginia. She has been recently published in Room Magazine, Invisible City, The Harvard Advocate, JMWW, The Normal School, and Litro.