Today’s poem is by Stella Brice, who wrote it after Hurricane Ike devastated the Houston and Galveston areas in 2008.

***

OLD WOMAN IN A CHAOS OF WINGS

This sky pours out
dark gold drama.

It pours out Japanese moon-god-mouth.
It’s pouring light
& it cannot stop.

It blatantly harbors
the arms of trees
sagging with entrailed birds

Bearing signal & message without end.

I shudder to remember
how often I forget.

Look up old woman
I remind myself.

Old woman I say

Look up.
Look up.

***

Stella Brice graduated from Rice University & has worked, variously, as house cleaner, tarot reader, & performance artist. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Urged (or, How Sex & Death Lift Up My Granny), Wait ‘Til I Get Fatter (both by Purple Flag Press/VAC, Chicago), & a new book forthcoming in 2018 by Tapir Press. She is a Pushcart nominee & a winner of the John Z. Bennet Prize. For the past two years, she has served as a mentor for the PEN American Center Prison Writer Program. Stella lives with her family in a 111-year-old house in Old Sixth Ward, Houston.