Poetry by Steve Gerson
Monday, September 23, Grand Chenier, LA,
hurricane season. The sky was the color of silk
coffin liners. The wind was heaving, bowing
and rising as mourners in prayer, quiet then
shrieking when wailing began. Palm leaves
outside the bedroom window startled
and calmed and woke and roiled.
I sat in the bedroom and watched the storm
unfold as bible pages turning from John’s
hearts untroubled and unafraid to Ecclesiastes’
dust returning to the ground. Fronds on the
wallpaper, once verdant, now grayed in the storm
shadows. The chandelier swayed in the house’s
torment, casting light flickers like candles snuffed.
She was still. Only her brown hair now pewter
quivered on the pillow, a stray breeze from the window,
the curtain shivering as the hurricane descended. Others
entered the room. We stood silent, our breaths held
in her breath denied. Our silence was as the hurricane’s
eye, tornadoes swirling around a dead center.
Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life’s dissonance and dynamism. He’s proud to have published in Panoplyzine, Route 7, Poets Reading the News, Crack the Spine, Montana Mouthful, the Decadent Review, Indolent, Rainbow Poems, Snapdragon, the Underwood Press, Wingless Dreamer, Gemini Ink, the Dillydoun Review, In Parentheses, and more. He’s proud to have published Once Planed Straight, a chapbook of prairie poems through Spartan Press.
