I am here on the cold tiled floor with my son
who is stripped who is down to his diaper.
He is learning how to crawl, how to move
in this great big world. Together, we feel
how cool air falls, how the hot air of the morning rises,
up to the ceiling of our home, which is lit only by the sun.
It’s been days since the hurricane left us—
and the heat of southeast Texas swooped in
to replace the lashing wind and the rain,
And my son, he is oblivious.
He feels no anger in his bones,
no fear in his throat, no grief in his gut.
He doesn’t understand why our days have been so weird—
why we’re huddled in the coolest room,
why I bathe him with cold water,
why we can’t go to the library,
which is also without electricity.
So I feel it for him, the rage like the afternoon heat
building up in my heart, at you, at your smirk—
as temperature climbs to ninety degrees,
and my son’s face turns red, and his nape dampens
and he falls to my lap in exhaustion—
at how you sit in a cool office while millions suffer.
Your face is just a reminder of how the world works—
the embodiment of concepts like late-stage capitalism,
climate change, inequality, but my son
doesn’t understand any of that just yet,
only that his mother doesn’t want to hold him
in her hot arms. And both of us cry.
Poems are selected by Poetry Editor Lupe Mendez, the 2022 Texas poet laureate and author of Why I Am Like Tequila. To submit a poem, please send an email with the poem attached to [email protected]. We’re looking for previously unpublished works of no more than 45 lines by Texas poets who have not been published by the Observer in the last two years. Pay is $100 on publication.
