Flood Season (1)
possumhaw red crawls through a fence//a bloom of lungs in drunk air
a powerline crooked w/ an uncle in its break//dreams of his sister//of
fire /ash//nature includes the electric//a blast of rot in the air//in the
cotton between sleep fog wraps the city/what is almost called awake//
&then May/floodwaters//tornado chasers/the smuggest of tourists//
meanwhile a teenage dad is ordering drive thru burgers on a raft//if it
were only the pieces that poem/wrens nesting in a pike skull/stonecrop
sneeze in a burnout scar//primary succession//instead we must grasp
also with the bloody leaves/brick faces//somewhere’s old story for so
long root torn//& then a long lurch of red hats floating in murky glass
Seth Copeland (he/him) edits petrichor and has appeared in Yes Poetry, Crab Fat, Kestrel, The Birds We Piled Loosely, and Permafrost. Originally from Oklahoma, he purses doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Twitter: @SethTCopeland
