When the Rains Don’t Stop
the streets flood, of course.
The roofs of parked cars
appear from above so many
loose gems lined across
the mirror’s glaze. The fire ants
make of themselves a drifting
island of panic and venom.
There go by in the current
of this impromptu river
a garbage bin, a kitchen chair,
a drowned raccoon. Below the hill
the Methodist church is little
more than steeple and ten apices
of stained-glass windows. And stuck
between the trees in the neighboring
wood are two muddy coffins,
the saturated earth giving up
its dead. Still, no one alive
is missing. For miles along
this uneven coast, no one alive
before the rains came is missing.
The uniformed men come
and go in their rowboats. High
in the trees, the frogs and
cicadas still sing.
June Sunday
Down this country road,
see nothing but the straight ribbon
of asphalt, and on either side, the green
of farmland, some fields planted,
some given over to grass,
and at long intervals, the one-note song
of mailbox after mailbox after mailbox,
flags down, mouths shut and waiting
for any sort of reason to be opened.
Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in over 100 journals and anthologies. She is author of the collection A Dangerous Heaven (2023) and the chapbooks Play (2016) and Bitten (2025). She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, the Jasper Project, and the SC Academy of Authors. She teaches at Francis Marion University in Florence, SC, and is the poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.
the streets flood, of course.
The roofs of parked cars
appear from above so many
loose gems lined across
the mirror’s glaze. The fire ants
make of themselves a drifting
island of panic and venom.
There go by in the current
of this impromptu river
a garbage bin, a kitchen chair,
a drowned raccoon. Below the hill
the Methodist church is little
more than steeple and ten apices
of stained-glass windows. And stuck
between the trees in the neighboring
wood are two muddy coffins,
the saturated earth giving up
its dead. Still, no one alive
is missing. For miles along
this uneven coast, no one alive
before the rains came is missing.
The uniformed men come
and go in their rowboats. High
in the trees, the frogs and
cicadas still sing.
June Sunday
Down this country road,
see nothing but the straight ribbon
of asphalt, and on either side, the green
of farmland, some fields planted,
some given over to grass,
and at long intervals, the one-note song
of mailbox after mailbox after mailbox,
flags down, mouths shut and waiting
for any sort of reason to be opened.
Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in over 100 journals and anthologies. She is author of the collection A Dangerous Heaven (2023) and the chapbooks Play (2016) and Bitten (2025). She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, the Jasper Project, and the SC Academy of Authors. She teaches at Francis Marion University in Florence, SC, and is the poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.
