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This appears in a pre-2010 issue of cc&d magazine. Saddle-stitched issues are no longer printed, but you can requesting it “re-released” through amazon sale as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book! Email us for re-release to order.

A Mudpuddle Faced Gurgling

Ray Karpovage

She says she likes the smell of rain
the way it pounds against the thirst
chasing dust up from the earth. I tell her
what she’s smelling is dirt. She shrugs
her shoulders and says “Well then
I guess I like the smell of dirt.”

When she was little she would splash
through puddles in new school shoes
and look up as the downpour
slicked her hair black and straight.

She got what she wished for today
and then some. It rained till dams
stretched, cracked and flooded
oily roads. Ran mud like freight
trains through houses with white water
brown. And left only family portraits
hanging crooked on lonely, splattered walls.

Her wishing filled arroyos,
washing graves with gravel that
flooded cemeteries with unwanted life
bypassing eternal snooze and accidentally
waking the should’ve been dead.

Her prayers came true today
and I tried to warn her, A FEMA
check only goes so far. And the sky,
it can be an ugly thing when egged on.

She sits now, looking out on what
used to be her front yard
slapping at mosquitoes and breathing in
that rotten taste of dirt and rain.

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