Flood Myth

Flora Trameri

Flora Trameri is a queer poet from Athens, Georgia. She is a student at the University of Georgia and a guest editor for Palette Poetry. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Gypsophila, Oroboro, Anti-Heroin Chic, and The Nation.

It’s not that I don’t have the stomach for it.

I slammed the empty bottle of Malbec down

and split the roach in two.

I wept at the wicked crunch,

the frantic movements of the headless body,

but laughed when I read the myths:

petulant gods swatting us like flies

for all of our ruckus.

Then a fly moved into my bedroom,

and I said, Oh.

I told my love of the cricket’s anguish,

how it writhed in the angry sea

of the stray cat’s water bowl,

how I offered the harbor of my index finger.

He called me saint, but it was not that—

I’d only hoped the gods were watching,

taking notes for when it was

my turn to drown.