Katie Chicquette Adams
Unnatural Disaster
You are sirens now—you are wails
the crisp report of rapid explosions
replaces your heartbeat.
You are violence repeated, predictable
and unexpected, numbingly shocking,
painfully unsurprising.
You are not a soldier, this is not a
foreign war. We are not mothers
waiting for flags to be handed to us
by somber servants of the greater good.
You are a certain statistic now—you are news;
the calmly somber broadcaster’s description
the final status on your feed.
You have transformed. Last week: a person
moving about this world the best you knew how,
with a life and problems and concerts to attend.
Now: evidence embraced by opposing arguments,
now vapors whose acrid absence
will always make the flagless mothers cry.
Poems and stories by Katie Chicquette Adams have appeared in River + Bay, Mothers Always Write, Heavy Feather Review, The New Verse News, Riggwelter, Poets Reading the News, and on Storycatchers. She is a live storyteller with Storycatchers and works as an English teacher for at-risk young adults at a public alternative high school in Appleton, WI.
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