Melissa Prunty Kemp

Sometimes when it rains

I know the sky is crying for this city,

so many evils, the lightning strike of killing.

Georgia rains come for days

flood the Chattahoochee

 

uplift what was buried there

eyes of children undiscovered.

Lakes in the streets an immovable wall

for speeding Range Rovers that ignore

Mother Nature’s tears, end up in a ditch

 

like so many nameless voiceless faces

children and young men, thrown away

beside fast food wrappers, plastic.

The rains fall forever in three days.

Thunder is the scream of heaven

 

shaking decade’s old foundations

loose from red clay, brick hard, unbaked

rejecting the rains’ soaking attempt

to wash it free of rape, strangled

DNA, semen and hair, tears on a rope.