Sixteen Years to the Day Another Hurricane Reverses
the Mississippi’s course my father waits in our house
beside the river and I dream my mother drowning
water closing over her head in my dreams she is always
dying in the too warm Gulf then pricked alive again
fairy-tale spindle my friends and I text each other
to describe dreams in which our mothers
ask us why they’re dead New Orleans is the place
around which I uselessly orbit after Katrina typing
my mother’s name Missing Person Jacki Cooley
into search engines sixteen years ago my daughters asked
what is a hurricane’s eye what can it see
then my mother was alive refusing to leave the city
now I text my father how high is the water are there tornadoes
phone and electric out I wish for a slick of river
to spare our house while a new dream about my mother
wrongly comforts she thrashes to the Gulf’s sand floor
where she can’t burn or come apart
Copyright © 2023 by Nicole Cooley. This poem was first printed in Blackbird, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Spring 2023). Used with the permission of the author.