After Harvey

Hurricane season has brought a flood of emotion to Americans from the southern U.S., including Cyclones across Texas, Florida, and the Caribbean. For poets like Eloísa Pérez-Lozano (’11 psychology, MS ’11 journalism) of League City, Texas, that flood of emotions was best released through art. Pérez-Lozano’s poem, “A City Drowning,” was published in the Houston Chronicle in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and she also wrote two haikus that were published on the Chronicle’s website.

Here is her published poem:

A City Drowning
You listen to deception,
innocent-sounding
pitter-patter on the windows
individual rain drops
falling slowly so you hear
each one's small thump
Suddenly, they quicken
their voices meld together
into a thunderous song
an ominous chant, the soft roar
of a liquid beast, whose shape is
not one you can contain.
This is an assault on my city
as rain falls in sheets for days
beating, hammering
knocking the earth senseless
drowning her over and over
before she can come up for air.
Drops are tiny fists as they fall
pummeling the ground
and when she won't give in
they soak her, saturate her
overtake her with millions
of themselves, joined together
gargantuan gallons of water
a life-giving force
turned murderer
too much for us to take.

Haiku (published on the Chronicle website):
Safe is our status
during this storm, but I feel
guilty for this gift.

Haiku (published on the Chronicle website):
Windshield wipers on
a sign from a sinking van
helped him stay alive.

Story published: September 2017