Julio Cesar Diaz
Missing Water
I own nothing but the January afternoon
the coastline waves jolted ferry boats
as beach goers broke-in the boardwalk.
No more drowning as Better safe than alive
was unveiled sloganed across archways.
In a bet, the bay lost her eddies to Greg.
Receding, the gulf coast gurgled the land
back up; cutting her losses to skirt captivity
at the hands of Greg and his industrial daddy.
Each ebb, full of golden threads, a last peak.
Timelines crashed into each other’s sacra-
mental green, marred as ocean raged home.
At this manmade drought, I lament in full
force against the bannisters, rusted copper.
It is necessary for someone to remember.
Seagulls, glitched in mid-air. It is VFX
or so bystanders assume. While tipping me,
they refuse to ask if we are next. So, I ask,
Is there anything to do? How—do I keep going?
The colony squawks nothing sensible, just do.
Too soon is the colony rendered back to sea dust.
Waiting in the empty gulf, I cannot recognize
what life is on this scorched earth. For a final
time, I recall my old memories of dowsing.
I am led to an infant sea, salted. Confirmed GSP
strike brings no monsoon, no downpour, no drizzle.
I fail my conjuring to drown earth and its false god.
How else is there to die on a scorched earth, if not by drowning?
Julio Cesar Diaz reads “Missing Water”
Julio Cesar Diaz, a Texas-born Centroamericano, lives in Western Massachusetts. Their work can be found in Pleiades Magazine, North American Review, Southword Journal, and elsewhere.