El Niño

Aleah Bantas

She heard her name being called,

reclining in a daze.

A voice said, get up.

The heat index climbs past numbers,

melting into the sheets

like a wax doll in May.

The fat glare opens at her

as she staggers back and forth.

The earth cracks, the crops dry,

and the sun bares its teeth.

Her bronze shoulder does not move.

Driven away by a swarm of locusts,

yet the voice calls her name, twice this time.

The little canoe beneath the mound

of soil is moored to her breathing,

buoyed by the rise of her chest.

The land passed down to her

arrives as a disownment.

Only a portion survives

in the mouth of harvest,

during a season of drought.

She may yet find herself, another year,

empty-handed.