HURRICANE
PARTY
AKRON SERIES IN POETRY
Akron Series in Poetry
Mary Biddinger, Editor
Alison Pelegrin, Hurricane Party
Matthew Guenette, American Busboy
Joshua Harmon, Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie
David Dodd Lee, Orphan, Indiana
Sarah Perrier, Nothing Fatal
Oliver de la Paz, Requiem for the Orchard
Rachel Dilworth, The Wild Rose Asylum
John Minczeski, A Letter to Serafin
John Gallaher, Map of the Folded World
Heather Derr-Smith, The Bride Minaret
William Greenway, Everywhere at Once
Brian Brodeur, Other Latitudes
Jeff Gundy, Spoken among the Trees
Alison Pelegrin, Big Muddy River of Stars
Roger Mitchell, Half/Mask
Ashley Capps, Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields
Beckian Fritz Goldberg, The Book of Accident
Clare Rossini, Lingo
Vern Rutsala, How We Spent Our Time
Kurt Brown, Meg Kearney, Donna Reis, Estha Weiner, eds.,
Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews
Sharmila Voorakkara, Fire Wheel
Dennis Hinrichsen, Cage of Water
Lynn Powell, The Zones of Paradise
Titles published since 2003.
For a complete listing of titles published in the
series, go to www.uakron.edu/uapress/poetry
Copyright 2012 by Alison Pelegrin
All rights reserved First Edition 2011 Manufactured in the United States of America. All inquiries and permission requests should be addressed to the Publisher, the University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio 443251703.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Pelegrin, Alison. Hurricane party / Alison Pelegrin. p. cm.(Akron series in poetry) ISBN 9781-935603085 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 9781-935603092 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Title. PS3566.E363H87 2011 811.54dc22 2011008198
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z 39.481992 (Permanence of Paper).
Cover: Water Sky, by Damara Kaminecki, copyright 2008. Used with permission. Cover design: Amy Freels
Hurricane Party was designed and typeset in Minion, with Futura display, by Amy Freels and Zac Bettendorf. Hurricane Party was printed on sixty-pound natural and bound by BookMasters of Ashland, Ohio.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some of the poems in this collection first appeared in other publications: Katrina Scribendi in 32 Poems; Hurricane Party, Blue Balls, River of Voices, and The Family Jewels in Barn Owl Review; Self-Portrait in a Tourists Snapshots in Blackbird; Funky from Now On in Brilliant Corners; Love Poem with Schooner and Ruins in Cave Wall; Where Yat and Praying with Strangers in Copper Nickel; Dispatch to Runaway the Younger and Little Song for Kimberly in Country Dog Review; Our Lady of Prompt Succor in Crab Creek Review; Shadow Ode, Raw Oysters with my Rock Star Husband, Foosball, Shania, and Thou, and Joy Ride on the Gretna Ferry in Diode; Helicopter Hands in Ducts.org; Stupid Praise in Image; A Brief History of My Life and 50-cent Words in The Journal; The Last Holdout in Linebreak; Ode to Things in New Plains Review; Pit Bull Pastoral in The Normal School; Invitation to the Gretna Royals in Oxford American; The Day the Music Stopped in Measure; Tubing on the Bogue Chitto in The Pinch; Tabasco in Space in Ploughshares; Louisiana, and Ode to Booze in River Styx; Something in the Water in The Rumpus; Blessings for a Nemesis in Southern Humanities Review; Daughter of the Confederacy in Southern Womens Review; The Creeps in Southern Poetry Review; Cumpleaos and Louisiana Crude in Souwester; Mid-City Tours in Sugar House Review; Bestiary of the Bayou State in Valparaiso Poetry Review.
I want to offer a sincere thank you to the people behind the scenes who offered support. The generosity of the National Endowment for the Arts and sabbatical leave from Southeastern Louisiana University helped me to begin these poems. Funding from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund and the encouragement of journal editors and poet friends, especially Sandy Longhorn, helped along the way. The University of Akron Press has been wonderful to work with (again). Special thanks to Amy Freels for her flourishes. My editor Mary Biddinger has cheered me from the beginningI am lucky to have her in my corner.
Thanks to my family, especially my mom.
Hubby Bryan DavidsonI cant do it without you.
for Ben & Sam
I have this inarticulate theory of being wronged.
I cant shut up about it. Im hooked on Katrina,
my worst luck (and I was lucky!) doling out
sucker punches, ulcers, and suspect fruit,
and who can make peace with bloody kisses?
There should be a twelve-step group, a safe house
FEMA trailer reachable by sea legs up the porch.
Once inside youd gather around the card table,
light hurricane candles, and mumble the Serenity Prayer.
Starting over should be so easy. One day
at a time you wake and reenter a world
where everybody has flood stories and a Sheetrock cough.
The stories hum in my mind like bees in the wall
river of voices rising to the watermark of what I choose
to remember, to breathe away from myself in one
long anonymous ode to mercy and decay.
Oh happy day, when it became okay to laugh!
Twinkle lights on the trash heap of soured clothes.
Our first practical joke, our first faux pas in months,
involving citrus from a neighbors tree that stood weeks
in flood waters, feigned death, but come spring
flourished with fruit. Post-Katrina etiquette
is so confusing! Is it okay to take the oranges that fall,
and if it is okay to take, is it okay to eat the floodnourished
fruit, and if one is unsure, is it okay
to pass the first taste off to an unsuspecting relative,
and once we see no harm is done, how long
are we allowed to laugh? A bystander would think
we took this on for fun, this reunion
of family at the table long after the meal
is cleared, telling our stories, which are one
story, the same story over and again,
only sometimes a few words added or missing,
story which, despite its heartbreak and body count
has always been about rebirth.
The state with the prettiest name,
