They’ll say you were having enough fun
For the both of us.
As if the amount of possible
Joy were finite. Maybe it is. I can’t multiply
This experience by the smell of wet rocks
By the river, confetti, and bourbon.
I walked against current.
Counter to orange. I did hear about the sunset.
I am having enough fun for only one.
I put glitter on everything.
I back down.
I took a different route home.
Waiting for the Hurricane
For DS
The coming storm keeps not coming so we go out for drinks,
Walk empty blocks of the unpeopled street toward the only store
That might be open. Overhead crows, wheeling. The wind stings
But carries no rain. Young men in fatigues and bored,
Marked by teenage acne scars, sit in humvees on St. Charles
With energy drinks, big smiles, and long black guns.
The owner of the Red Zone’s glad to see the National Guard.
It means no looting like before. These boys, the only ones having fun
In a whole city not talking about levees, not talking about
Being trapped clawing in the attic, or the dark threat
Of water rising. There’s a fig tree on the way back to the house
With impossibly purple fruit that you climb the fence to get.
I lie to the owners when they pass by with their dog and stare
Because how can we be stealing when none of us are here.
Aran Donovan has appeared in Bayou, Best New Poets, The Common, and Rattle. She tweets sporadically @barelymarigny.