I’m so pleased to share the work of poet Kelly Harris-DeBerry. This is a magnificent poem, but Kelly writes more than poetry. Some of you may recognize her name, as she has written nonfiction on Pinkie Gordon Lane, Louisiana’s first African American Poet Laureate. Kelly is a magnificent performer of her work—a reminder that poetry, always, comes down to the voice.  

 —Alison Pelegrin 

The Water Next Time  

might be in your city  

visiting you 

like a cousin  

from the South 

offering you 

a gulp of river 

the rum of death 

your living swallowed 

it’s hard to scream  

and survive, but  

we live, knowing 

questions pour  

from sky and tongues 

God or government,  

who names our suffering 

who are we but our mothers  

breaking into a paradise 

with no promise 

how many times 

have you looked away 

tucking sympathy  

under your tongue, 

pointing at disaster,  

as if it were proof 

that death is location 

a coastal choice  

but don’t you see 

from way up North 

water is water— 

 a passport of its own 

Ask Flint, New Orleans  

how water makes a city  

a casket fading into the wash 

of the world 

Oh, dear snow angels, 

facing the sky 

soon you will taste  

the global thaw 

and high-speed winters 

I want to warn you  

nightmares come true 

Earth could have been  

more than a purse  

holding king-sized living  

what did we plant 

but skyscrapers of greed 

who heated the land 

and drained the clouds 

who shoved our hills  

into the sea 

who filed the Earth  

down to bone  

we the water
we the wounded 

Kelly Harris-DeBerry is a poet and the author of Freedom Knows My Name. Read and listen to more of her work at kellyhd.com.