I was talking to these really smart undergraduate classes
earlier today, and I told one of the classes
I would tell them the story of this poem, "Hurricane."
The thing is, when you write about the mother
figure in poetry, eventually, you
have to turn that on yourself and think about that.
So "Hurricane" is a poem that I wrote for my daughter.
She was born in New Orleans.
But also, in Pittsburgh, there's this little small carnival
that comes to town, and there's a ride there
that's called the Hurricane.
And my daughter wanted to get on that ride,
and no one else in the family wanted to.
We're like, that joint, it's rickety.
I don't know if the paperwork's in order.
And so when my husband and I were going back and forth
about it, my daughter just put up her little hand,
and she said, just give me the tickets.
I'll go by myself.
And we let her.
"Hurricane."
"Four tickets left, I let her go, firstborn into a hurricane.
I thought she escaped the floodwaters.
No, but her head is empty of the drowned for now,
though she took her first breath below sea level.
Ahhh, awe, and aw, Mama, let me go.
She speaks what every smart child knows.
To get grown, you unlatch your hands
from the grown and up and up and up and up.
She turns, latched in the seat of a hurricane.
You let your girl what?
I did so she do I did so she do so--
girl, you can ride a hurricane.
And she do and she do and she do and she do.
She do make my river an ocean.
Memorial, Baptist, Protestant birth--
my girl walked away from a hurricane.
And she do and she do and she do and she do.
She do take my hand a while longer.
The haunts in my pocket I'll keep to a hum.
Katrina was a woman I knew.
When you were an infant, she rained on you.
And she do and she do and she do and she do."