.jpg)
Daniel Brennan
Helene Hits the Coast
​
They watch a house float by
like a fallen oak leaf and if that
wasn’t bad enough
the French Broad River
is gray and bloated as a water-logged corpse
and speaking of
water-logged corpses, they haven’t
seen their neighbor in nearly 24 hours, not since
he tried taking his motorboat
as means of escape down
what was once their block but now
is a mirror reflecting
the bruised eye of sky above them.
She doesn’t ask him about what’s been stirred
by the storm and he doesn’t tell her
about the things you can’t see below the surface.
From the second floor
of their newly remodeled home,
they listen as a radio newscaster
tells them experts say this is a once
in a thousand-year storm
as if that could possibly be true, as if
this is not the choir’s steady refrain,
the call and response
of a knotted growth held deep
in the bones of the earth below them.
Their hands are cold and wet
like the fish corralled into their town’s
makeshift waterways, all traces of is
refurbished into was, and he has
the gall to lean into her ear and whisper,
as if to assure himself, next time
won’t be so bad.
​
​
​
Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. Sometimes he's in love, just as often he's not. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Sho Poetry Journal, Puerto Del Sol, and Trampset. He can be found @DanielJBrennan_