by Andy Young
We take a morning walk,
cross the two-lane
draped in trees
then lurch down into the flat gulch
the waterfall used to be here one says
the whole encrusted chain
of the once-river hulking above us
as we walk the dry flat river stones
stop to look at the grooves
in the rock where the water ran
I step on a gray solid-seeming spot
but when I step on I go in my right leg swallowed
trees at the bank’s edge dangle
their long roots, long trunks leaning barely
over banks barely banks
in cartoons quicksand
was always a thing then later it wasn’t
I’d laughed at that particular fear
now here I was the slow squeeze of my leg
my face a flat panic
frontline trees, these are next to go
mud hardens around me
I’ll sink but not quick
the more I try to step
the more stuck my leg
next hurricane tornado wind event
the wind takes whatever else he says
Andy Young teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her second full-length collection, Museum of the Soon to Depart, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mellon University Press, and she is the author of four chapbooks. Her work has recently appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review, Pidgeonholes, and The Journal of the American Medical Association. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, her work has been translated into several languages, featured in classical and electronic music, in flamenco and modern dance performances, and in jewelry, tattoos, and public buses.