By Jane Hammons
HURRICANE LAURA’S COURSE
Backwards flow the waters of the mighty Mississippi. Unchart the chart of known courses. Rewrite maps. History. Story. Correct course of usual tellings.
Ippississim: teach your children that spell.
Reclaim mark twain*: let it mean again and only two fathoms, twelve feet.
The raft is Jim’s.
Along the shores teach: Choctaw Chickasaw Quapaw Osage Caddo Natchez Tunica Sioux Sauk and Fox Ojibwe Pottawatomie Illini Menominee Ho-chunk.
Ditch de Soto: he discovered nothing.
Over your flow under the Danziger Bridge turn bullets. Return Hurricane Katrina gunfire truth.
Flow the waters over Minneapolis St. Paul. Overflow. Ten miles from the shores to Cup Foods. Revive George Floyd. Wash away the Chauvin gang.
New Mississippi River baptisms called for. Called forth. Forthcoming.
Along shores awaiting reversal trickster water invites.
* ‘mark twain’ is in lower case as the words have been used to name the nautical measure
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Jane Hammons has work forthcoming in Scrawl Place and The East Over Anthology of Rural Writers. She lives in New Mexico and is an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
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