text: Hotel Beach/After the Hurricane
  Afterwards I said the palm tree was like a snake
  coiling around the delicate outdoor bannister
  but Janette said like a swan courting a swan.
  The cabanas were nothing but sticks, like war.
  We took pictures of each other climbing the rubble
  looking incongruously tan, and healthy.
  Others began climbing the ruins with us.
  The woman who’d kept running up and down the stairs
  hoping maybe the hurricane wouldn’t see her.
  The couple who’d slept as if rocked
  in a cradle, though their beds shook
  all night like dice in a loose fist.
  All of us escaping, it seemed, from something.
  Janette from the thing with her mother and brother.
  I just arrived from the place for the almost crazy.
  As if we’d stepped out of our lives
  like out of some bad pairs of shoes.
  And our lives would never be able to find us.