months after the earthquake / inside the exclusion zone / the water has hardened to mud / there are bodies still / there is a man in white pants & a white jacket / face-down in the mud / he’s suspended like those figures that come inside soap bars / like someone bobbing for apples with their body / it looks funny at first until you realize it’s a real person / that someone is probably still looking for this person / they say they’ve cleaned up all the bodies / off the road / this man is just a few yards away / from far away he blends into the mud / it looks like he could get up but he doesn’t / a city is buried inside him under him
okada
Published online July 26, 2016
Meg Eden’s work has been published in various magazines, including Rattle, Drunken Boat, Poet Lore and Gargoyle. She teaches at the University of Maryland. She has four poetry chapbooks, and her novel Post-High School Reality Quest is forthcoming from California Coldblood, an imprint of Rare Bird Lit.
