A smoke stack with warning lights.
Beneath the clouds.
A refrigerator emptied of all, but medications.
Beneath the clouds.
A homeless man, dovening on the flooded street.
His voice, a howl in a tunnel.
Fork lifts scoop up the gravel. The hotel room,
swampy, the telephone cold.
A morning of hoisting sandbags. I left your photos
safe in California. Beneath the clouds.
Joan E. Bauer is the author of three full-length poetry collections, Fig Season (Turning Point, 2023), The Camera Artist (Turning Point, 2021), and The Almost Sound of Drowning (Main Street Rag, 2008). Recent work has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Slipstream and Chiron Review. For some years, she was a teacher and counselor and now divides her time between Venice, CA and Pittsburgh, PA where she co-curates the Hemingway's Summer Poetry Series with Kristofer Collins.
