by Jeffrey Tucker

I knew by the scent,
not like two of every kind –
hippos, elephants, no.
Others ran to crumbling ropes, smutched beams
someone shouted A keel! A bone!
I bent to my clay-crusted boots
and rubbed fingers along the wet welt,
grainy red caking its way under nails.
Bringing hand to face I breathed, shut my eyes
remembering the last hurricane’s smell,
how it began as drizzle, so soft
my children danced in it.

Jeffrey Tucker teaches at The University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where he lives with his wife. His work has recently appeared in Poetry South, Tapestry, The Broken Plate, and elsewhere. He is also the co-editor of Squid Quarterly, an online journal dedicated to publishing flash fiction and prose poetry.