Andy Young

Before Zeta, the seventh hurricane of the season, hits the city

my neighbor who waves at me
who I wave back to finally speaks

this neighborhood used to be filled
with teachers teachers every block

he’s lived on that spot all his life
was on that roof for two days during Katrina

watched the house on this lot
where our house is now fill up with water

water to that stop sign there just down Cadillac
right over there on St Bernard—he points east—

the old folks and folks with disability we had to help
pull them out it was sad it was real sad

he hates the unruly Loblolly Pine in our yard
spends hours raking its rusted needles

Zeta came the pine whacked our house
but did not break when the eye passed we waived

the sky above his house a glowing bruise
we didn’t know then that we would be spared

he still wants the pine tree gone but won’t say so just
shakes his head and eyes it I watched it in Katrina bend

to the ground he’d told me and windshield-wipered
his forearm down and back and I didn’t say it

but couldn’t that just prove its strength

---

Snapshot from One of Many Summers

my god Roberta
we were lovely how
we shine from backlit
shadow all the green
summer behind us

leaf leaf leaf crowning
us my infant son
in a pouch he’s small
as an afterthought
one small hand—its own

leaf—reaches toward his
stretched pink toes his face
barely lit your arm’s
around me fingers
cupping my shoulder

I’m leaning in…
         Roberta
you left before
our copper hair
turned white

before our kids
were old enough
to see what we
were to each other
green maple filters

green light lights
your face shadows veil
your green eyes but I know
they pool there depthless
sun blasts the field

behind us the future
stampedes
but our back’s
to it someone
tell us someone

---

Andy Young grew up in southern West Virginia and has lived most of her adult life in New Orleans, where she teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. A graduate of University of North Carolina  at Chapel Hill and Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, her second full-length collection, Museum of the Soon to Depart, was published in October 2024 by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She has won the Patricia Spears Jones Award, the Nazim Hikmet Award, and has been granted residencies in Virginia, Louisiana, Vermont, and Barcelona.