Hurricane Hazel, 1954
By Tatiana Retivov
You were in a wheelbarrow that day
when the wind overturned
trees, trashcans,
and I was being born.
In the pavilion Hazel foamed
while Furies hovered above,
their hands wrung with joy.
She kept me deadlocked
like Julius Caesar
in a pool of blood.
Then you diverted
oh so smoothly
my Hazel’s wrath.
What color are her eyes?
You wondered.
Of the sea, she said, look.
You looked bay-ward and saw
the oblique horizon merge
here with sky, there with swamp,
faithful to neither.
Then looking blood-ward you saw me,
grey-eyed like Athena.
This story originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 17.
Photo by Zoltan Tasi.