print previewback NICOLE COOLEY
Sixteen Years to the Day Another Hurricane Reverses
the Mississippi’s coursemy father waits in our house
beside the riverand I dream my mother drowning
water closing over her head in my dreams she is always
dying in the too warm Gulf then pricked alive again
fairy-tale spindle my friends and I text each other
to describe dreams in which our mothers
ask us why they’re dead New Orleans is the place
around which I uselessly orbit after Katrina typing
my mother’s name Missing Person Jacki Cooley
into search engines sixteen years ago my daughters asked
what is a hurricane’s eye what can it see
then my mother was alive refusing to leave the city
now I text my father how high is the water are there tornadoes
phone and electric outI wish for a slick of river
to spare our house while a new dream about my mother
wrongly comforts she thrashes to the Gulf’s sand floor
where she can’t burn or come apart 
Mother Water Ash
New Orleans Love Poem
Sixteen Years to the Day Another Hurricane Reverses