Fresno Forgot To Warn Our Children Of Drought Poem by jason wymore

Fresno forgot to warn our children

About Drought:

Their eyes wonder what that looks like at night.
Did you tell Cesar Chavez before he died
his words could only feed empty hands for so long?
If Heaven is where we go if we leave this world
Alive
Where do stone fruits go
When they die?

The theft of groundwater is sinking
The Sun Maid Raisin factory,
Lowering Kingsburg.
Raising unemployment.
Field hands hang their hungry skin
In shame
Outside. In case their children won’t forget
Where the crows borrowed riberas
In return for seeds.
Tell that Diving Bell
Spider

To retire it’s weaving
Of generations
There is no air
Here left
To breath.


Rent is not waterproof
Neither is yesterday’s family
From Tulare they washed away
Bud Light stays up late
waiting to hear some
father’s diaspora.

Ask the mothers if shade is all that sweet.

The Central Valley’s south
Of
Sagging
Looks like Kenya, almonds
Forgotten in his pocket, carry home
Whispers scaring the family — water tables
Are going the way of Judas.

Dangling.

Wells can’t pump enough streams
(2500 hundred gallons per minute isn’t enough?)
While we drown in trickling images
run
off
from water bottle labels drenching city,
drinkers in plastic up
to the knees.

Is there still room for longhorns at the T-Bar
Next to the new Waterpark off the 99
Where rust drips?

Fresno’s City Hall.
Which Republican pays
When alfalfa retires?
Forced migration punctures
Reservoirs
Of
School
Funding loss.

Water determines who leaves.

Who survives this dog eat dog landscape
When the Earth’s jaws are too arid to pump
Life past our teeth?