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After the Disaster: Fragments

By Andrea Carter Brown

We are not starving.
                                                                      We are wearing

shoes on our feet.
                                                                      We have friends

to care for us; a roof
                                                                       albeit borrowed,

over our heads. We are
                                                                       husbands, wives

still; lovers, parents, children.
                                                                       But the dust

of thousands has settled
                                                                       over our living

rooms, an early snow
                                                                       fall, in late summer,

the first winter
                                                                       of the rest of our lives.
Added: Thursday, July 3, 2014  /  Previously published in The MacGuffin. Used with permission.
Andrea Carter Brown

Andrea Carter Brown is the author of two poetry collections, The Disheveled Bed (Cavankerry, 2009) and an award-winning chapbook, Brook & Rainbow (Sow's Ear Poetry Review). A second chapbook, Domestic Karma, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in October 2018. Her manuscript, American Fraktur, was selected by Jane Hirshfield for the 2018 Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award from Marsh Hawk Press. Series Editor of The Washington Prize for The Word Works, she lives in Los Angeles, where she grows oranges, lemons, limes, and tangerines in her backyard.

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