Michael Schmeltzer: Tsunami
Since she died gradually I thought her death
like spilt honey
would be easy to manage, the viscous mess
slow, controllable.
Over the course of months
the senses one at a time went
blind, the words next,
each flung from her mouth
then shot
as if by skeet shooters
until conversation was impossible, until only
the lone word “water”
croaked from her throat.
Then organs like shops in a bankrupt mall
pulled down their shutters,
taped up hand-written thank-yous.
Now the flat line sings with the steady force
of a tsunami. It intones a note, escalates
in amplitude.
It overwhelms—not with precision but totality—
streetlamps and identical offices,
trees with their frail leaves
frantically paddling against the waves.
All bodies transform
to water and rubble
when confronted with water and rubble.
Listen: In the beginning
was the mother, and the mother
covered her child.
In the end was the child who covered his mother.
In all the stories I hold sacred
there is this blanket the color of foam.
MICHAEL SCHMELTZER earned an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop. His honors include numerous Pushcart Prize nominations, the Gulf Stream Award for Poetry, and the Blue Earth Review’s Flash Fiction Prize. He has been a finalist for the Four Way Books Intro and Levis Prizes, the Zone 3 Press First Book Prize, as well as the OSU Press/The Journal Award in Poetry. He helps edit A River & Sound Review
and has been published in PANK, Rattle, Natural Bridge, and Mid-American Review, among others.
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