Originally published in Real Change March 1, 1997
it is raining hard for the 29th straight night the number of years i have been alive
and over on cherry street a man begins to yell and i wonder if he has been stabbed or had an eye gouged
out by someone’s mad thumb
what could make him yell like that? what is it like to die in the rain like this
see blood ooze out if he can see at all
the roof is leaking in this house and the basement is flooding it rises to the bottom stair
all i hear is water it pelts the panes overruns the gutters drips through the ceiling and his blood is flowing
a siren splashes and swims its way through the valley and the buzzhorn of medic one is coming and going
to make this man’s world full of linoleum and emergency rooms his wet muddy clothes will clash with the
rheumy doctor’s scalpel and protective mask
will they look each other in the eyes?
i wonder why martin luther king blvd always goes through the poor sections, the valleys, where there is no
dominion except a channel in which to run refuse and garbage on its way to the river and to the sea
cars and ambulances slog through a shoe a blanket is lost to the gutter the muddy basement rises water
plinks into pots and pans and the rotten ceiling caves in
the sky comes to crush this room this house the hole in the roof empties where there is no place left to go
everything is cement and blacktop and water runs down from the clearcuts along the naked mountainside
to this valley with the name mlk/the rain is falling from all sides it will not stop/the sirens fade
the man is gone
but it won’t stop
29 days
years
nights
my eyes
seattle new york and everything in between is a wound
and my hands cannot stop the holes
my fingers on my belly cannot hold back the flood
flood come
let it rain rain
let the yells come down
Read more of the Nov. 1-7, 2023 issue.