Smithereens Press Chapbooks 'Rootless' by Jennifer Matthews | Page 24

After the Flood
Cork, 2010

We made a game of disaster.
Above fishbowled shops
swapped cups of tea
for cigarettes with neighbours.
Perched in windows
over roads that became rivers,
watched the defiant glide
of kayaks out for sport,
for laughs lapping their oars
into the tainted deep
and slicing back up to the light.
By evening the question
of water deepened: its absence
in homes where the hiss
of air through shower heads
echoed hollow hope,
mothers tested taps cold and hot,
twisting on and off.
When the Lee unclenched its grip
from the city centre
our divers dispatched to canals,
met first their own reflections
on the brown-black water
before the plunge and search
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