Flood

By: Angelica Brown

Flood 

She who swallowed up the earth in vengeance for 
the prowling weevil and the hopping jerboa and the slick-turn trout 
the gnarled trees that cackle so hard they weep pink blossoms 
the little babies and old people who bathe their flappy limbs in the sun who can’t cook scrambled eggs and bacon for shit, 
birthed a humanity and died in childbirth. 

Her carcass is buried beneath the surface of the earth, and the ancestors go to join her. 
The scaled and feathered dinosaurs who croaked out operas 
The dodo birds who spent their millenium bobbing and pecking at armored bugs 
And families of people, who cooed at crying babies, who couldn’t make oil worth shit. 

They are resting in her loving, vengeful bosom, 
They are waiting for justice ​

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Angelica Brown

is a writer and youth worker from Portland, Oregon. Her writing has been most recently featured in Geez Magazine, and she is currently working on a collection of poems about the apocalypse. ​