This is Poetry Moment on WPSU – a weekly program featuring the work of contemporary Pennsylvania poets. Your host is poet and author Marjorie Maddox, a 2023 Monson Arts Fellow, author of more than 20 books, and Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at the Lock Haven campus of Commonwealth University.
Welcome to Poetry Moment. I’m Marjorie Maddox
The 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season runs from June 1 to November 30th. Pennsylvania sees its fair share of significant storms, widespread flooding, and even direct hits. Now imagine an insurmountable force—by any name—that wreaks havoc and destruction. In her poem "Hurricane Season," Monica Prince counsels herself to stand strong in the face of adversity.
Monica Prince serves as an Associate Professor of Activist & Performance Writing and the Director of Africana Studies at Susquehanna University. Her choreopoem books include "FORCE," "Roadmap," and "How to Exterminate the Black Woman."
Prince's work can be found in The Missouri Review, Wildness, Glassworks, and elsewhere. Having moved to Selinsgrove, PA in 2017, she spends her time teaching, writing, dancing, and directing plays and choreopoems across the Susquehanna Valley and beyond.
Today's poem, "Hurricane Season" by Monica Prince, responds to Rachel McKibbens' 2017 book, "blud." According to the book's description, "blud" addresses "ways in which inherited things―bloodlines, mental illnesses, trauma―affect their inheritors."
Here’s "Hurricane Season" by Monica Prince.
Hurricane Season
-after Rachel McKibbens
It’s in the small moments—
a stray rain drop on the edge
of an afro puff, a line of blood
marking a scar reopened, not fatal,
a quiet river marching toward Hell—
in which you remember love like a monsoon, like a forecast
calling for devastation. You have been
warned every day since the light
broke you open, and to no one’s surprise,
you did not evacuate, did not
board up your windows or even
fill the closets with water and tuna.
You always stay, convinced you know better than God,
than the rupturing seams of clouds
and slick backhands of lovers.
The first time is never the last time,
foolish heart of spider wire,
misplaced trust and golden naivety.
Name every storm after the officer
who takes down your statement
but never files charges. Tattoo
each moniker on the remodeled bone
once the beating sheets lighten
against the side of the house
you call body. One morning, you
will say enough, ripen like overstuffed
grape, poison the smiles of any
possible love, call it protection.
One day, you will trade this recurring
season in a country you believed
was your inheritance for a new planet,
cleansed not by rain but fire, still
burning, the smoke a song in your lungs.
Originally published in Glassworks: Issue 27, Fall 2023; all rights owned by the author.
Listen for Poetry Moment with Marjorie Maddox Mondays during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on WPSU. You can view more episodes at wpsu.org/poetrymoment.
Our theme music is by Eric Ian Farmer.
