Virgil Suarez
Decima for Tropical Deluge
Whose god has opened the floodgates? Who knew
water to be this irascible? The children remove
their red panueletas and drop them into the currents,
this history of gush down the streets to the gutters.
Some call it lluvial descarga, how the fat drops
riddle the earth with an ancient calligraphy of renewal.
For days it rains. The coffee plants drop their orange
fruit, crown their roots with them. A blood-fire
circle. Women hum prayers to the Orishas, blow
kisses at the angry clouds which dream, too, of dry places.