Galveston, 1900

 

Cora, in her boudoir, in her peignoir, prepared
for ravenous, black-garbed guests, readied urns
for coffee grounds, locked the door, pocketed the key,
then mounted and rode to the beach to view
the mounting waves.

She hurried in order to hurry
back – for Thistle and Reliance, two prize
horses of the coroner, would come round
before a springing coach this afternoon at three,

and a coroner more seasick than mahouts
or swinging canaries on dinnerware
would step out to collect,
to eat not-worthy
or noteworthy teacakes
and tear all the flesh from the fruits.

Clouds surged early in their black
as the waves rolled in and grew in
height, soon taller than the eldest
children playing in them, and then
even taller, and one madman galloping
up and down the beach, yelling warning
to spectators in countless carriages
aligned along the coast.

The wind began, began
flipping up petticoats, turning up
parasols. Ribbons flayed faces
they once framed, each lady a shepherded shepherdess
with her torn skirts and hooked staff.

Water crept terrestrial toward fleeing
hemlines and trouser cuffs, and the wind
threw spray painfully – horses fallen then praying
then swallowed and thrashing, as
the carriages they lashed against
drank in the sea and sank. Tied in teams,
they could all remember
Eohippus, and their dark legs tangled
in their tails, and the swimmers clung,
corsets tighter, the horses' bits
blocking breath. Reins snapped
and the sailboats snapped
their moors, tossed relieved.

The rose hips pinched
in my pockets
for luck
rose to the lip
of the fabric
and spilled out
into a spilled-over
coastline, churned
in the saline, filling
with water and
blooming again, releasing
funeral scents, blooms
of blood billowing
past in the wind of the tide
and kicked about
by my little boots kicking
and kicking mid-air
and laced
eyelet to eyelet
behind eyelets
of petticoat lace
to the corset
laced to all the eyelets
of my spine

and she lashed three girls
to herself, waist to
waist, to the berth
of her hips listing alongside
ships and corpses, tied to three
girls she might have
birthed, and they began
to sink together, collarbone
to eye socket.

The coroner struggled with the sudden
possession of what he had sought.

I carried your daub 
on my handkerchief
since, my back turned, you
blotted yourself. We laughed
about libation. I fingered the stain
against the satin lining of my trouser pocket
and made the sign of the cross.

He made the sign of the cross,
each strike of his breath
between drownings.

A dog dove from a roof to retrieve
his missing owner and, scentless,
paddled in circles until washed away
into open waters, tongue lolling.
Birds hovered above absent eggs in absent nests
in absent trees, screaming upon screams.

In the name of the father and O and
the roar, the roar and the rip of it all
and the orphanage built only to hold a sea
of children, and I feel their little fingers
tugging my habit as the lord pulls them under
to heaven and O, Mary, pray for us sinners,
amen, amen.

A man floats by face up, a wet
cat perched on him and his head beaten
and beaten against the side of a house
toppled by the side of a house toppling.

Wails of orphans fainter, following
the blown-over wind, leaving,
at the end, in the calm, one standing wall
of debris – glass and planks and those
half dying lying with the dead
atop splintered shop signs and gilt picture frames.

I was once one of them;
I once drowned.
The smell of salt still makes me ill.
I came to watch what they were watching
but watched them wash away, clouding
the tide with their dark garments, moving
like iron filings against a magnet.
Perhaps I am that magnet.

The drowned were buried at sea, carried
by cart from then-dry land to be refused
by the unbearable, unburiable water
which took them, but
when given them,
gave them back.

They had to be burned then – bodies piled
on funeral pyres, neighbors
beside neighbors burning
neighbors kept burning.
Smoke rose.

 

 

 

Published under the name Jeanette Karhi in The South Carolina Review, Fall 2006, Vol. 39, No. 1