Hurricane Floyd, 1999, and: Abandon

Abstract

Hurricane Floyd, 1999, and: Abandon Stephen Hundley (bio) Hurricane Floyd, 1999 This is the storm that ruins us,water climbing the stairwell / pulling babyshoes from the basket, heaping bicyclesand palm fronds on the body of a cat. You say: We'll make it back, Baby.We'll make it back, but I know, I knowthis is the storm that slides a handunder the houseskins and pulls / shows you what was stinking where you stuffed it.Shows you: cutie cutie nudies and puffypulped insulation clinging to pinewood trusseslike the ribs of a whale. On the highway our children sleep. And the dog rollson the car floor rooting fries from the seats.And your brother is waiting in Atlantawith beds for the children, who wonder: who will feed our fish? But Baby,this is the storm that takes the porch off.Mud slicks in the carpets, and spartinahangs from the fan. In the living room, she-crabs mount an oak trunk andstrange panties bubble with vodkabottles from the den. Nested in brake lightsahead, your truck is blinking, pulling away. [End Page 95] This is the storm that piles and stacks,black-bags your shit, Baby. Blows itall open. In Atlanta, your brother is waiting.Baby asks: Who will feed our fish? I say: Baby,we let those fish go free. Abandon This dock is coming apart. These boards,gone to sticks and splinters, leaving for yearsin the skin of our feet. They walkoff the water, move three states away. The cleats are grown white from the salt,and if you grip them, and arch your back,the moon will reward you with a mirror.Grey metal galvanized, like memory,even sunk they will not die. Ask me, what becomes of crab traps foreveron the river bottom. The last catch, drawnby chicken scrap. Flipper legs, feather mouths,telescoping eyes, puzzling, puzzling the cageuntil the next catch is drawn by rotted crab.And on and on. The earthen bank falls away. The pilingsslump aside. Come home to find them,the years gone by, washed into the cordgrass.The heron fishes and fiddlers wave. The purse-lipped oysters all around. [End Page 96] Stephen Hundley Stephen Hundley is a former high school science teacher from Savannah, Georgia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cutbank, Carve, Permafrost, and other journals. He serves as the fiction editor for the Swamp and is a Richard Ford Fellow at the University of Mississippi. Copyright © 2020 University of Nebraska Press