Poem After the 'Rain of Frogs' Scene in 'Magnolia'
It could happen my wife says & tells me the story
she heard on the radio about a funnel cloud touching
down on the surface of one of the great lakes,
a suction so intense a giant school of fish got sucked
up into the skies then when the cloud-tornado
touched down on a nearby town, fish rained every
where - the mess, the stink, the townspeople in awe
of such a thing, huddled in a church & prayed.
Like in the movie except frogs rained down like fists
upon everything. I remember the day my father
returned from La Cienega de Zapata, Cuba's swamp
land, with several jute sacks of sapotoros,
these chicken-sized bull frogs he wanted me to help
him clean, slaughter, so my mother could fry their legs,
& when he opened the mouths of those sacks
& the frogs started jumping everywhere, I nearly
fainted, the brown, clammy amphibians herding
themselves toward the corners of the cement patio.
I couldn't bring myself to do what my father did,
which was grab the machete, then go after the frogs,
one by one, hold them by the legs, chop their heads
off, blood everywhere, mixing into a frothy goo
of mud, frog guts, and frog saliva, my father shouting
to look at the way they spat, the blade of his machete
sparked as he chopped. For many nights I dreamt
of those frogs, pyramids of them, trying to escape -
a green mass that I swear will one day rise again
and come haunt me, like that movie, this poem, the rains.
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