FLOODING BASEMENTS

By: Samantha Wright

There was a storm in the night,

and the limbs were heavy,

and the branches fell down.

and all the basement floors celebrated

their return to deep waters.

And the houses said, No, thank you.

I do not want my windows to swell,

I do not want to talk about the wind,

I do not want to hold it together.

We did our best to keep the inside in, and the outside out,

but the basements kept swelling,

and garbage cans were bowled over.

The next morning, things were exposed:

liquor bottles; positive pregnancy tests, broken dishes.

So many secrets filled up the streets.

We cleaned up each other’s messes silently,

all the neighbors eyeing one another,

all of our mistakes laid out for everyone to see.

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Samantha Wright lives in Washington State with her husband, Tony. Her poems have been featured in many of Philadelphia's Moonstone Arts Center's anthologies. You can also find her work in other online and print publications: including Prometheus Dreaming; Beyond Words; NYC's Mignolo Arts (pinky thinker press): University of Baltimore's Welter Magazine, and others. Her poems have been included in previous issues of Cathexis Northwest.