Current
Issue

Volume 12.2

John Fadely

Topography

It’s not as if I had
a mind to be diverted, 
my flow valved
and concrete-lipped, 
nor was it my intent
to be kissed by mouths
of vapor fluxing down 
from the Pacific, acres of
my aquifers washed out to sea.
These weren’t of me.  
When a sinkhole swallows
two cars whole or the Salinas
running swift and wild
to the coast sweeps a boy 
away, I’m the natural
not the disaster: 
nerve endings
on the face of it,
the sway before 
the shimmer and shake,
fossil bed for unclaimed bones.

Bio Copy here

Back to top Arrow