Drought Stares Back

Drought is a broken clay cup,
unglazed orange clay, with all the names of hunger written around the rim.

Drought is a rusted-out old bucket
that smells of rotten metal and death.

Drought is the handmaid of Famine and the herald of Fire.

Drought is a mob of windup metal woodpeckers
that hammer the trees and bleed the weaker ones to death.

Drought is a mouthful of brown stumps
chewing through a tangle of bleached grass and dead ivy.

Someone left a cracked porcelain sink on the sidewalk.
Drought is the holes that stare from the basin.

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