THE HOARDER’S BASEMENT

Even from the sidewalk we could glimpse
through tiny basement windows
the glint of water
almost lapping the jambs.

The trash boats lolling
with their rat captains,
tails dipped like pink rudders
into the dead pond.

One day it rained
two inches in an hour.
We heard glass shatter,
looked to see
the hoarder’s cellar
dump from every side

its black ballast
into the yard,
the drive,
the street.

A fleet of empty milk jugs merged
into the river
that was road.

Trash bags swirled
toward the grate.

Mice scrambled
up the peaks
of those tumbling islands.

In the torrent
tomcats hunched
along the bank
to dip their quick paws
into the rush
like bears
to snatch the passing fish.

Author Biography

Raised in South Florida, Paul David Adkins lives in New York. 

AMELIA EARHART AND FRED NOONAN ENCOUNTER AN INFESTATION OF LAND CRABS ON NIKUMARORO ISLAND

We expected mosquitoes to cloud and suck us dry

but it was land crabs
we couldn’t fend off even with our boot heels.

Even with the hundreds we tossed into the fire
where they hissed
and popped so hard

we had to dodge
the flaming shards of them.

They pinched us in our sleep, drew blood.

Their antennae stroked
our arms
like the leg hairs of scuttling cockroaches.

They clogged the campfire with their black flexed claws and charred meat the scent of tires striking a runway.

We fashioned a hammock
from the aircraft windshield, our pants, and the last threads of bootlace.

We slept in shifts.

We tossed fish skeletons into the scrub
for five minute’s peace.

Even fifty feet away
we heard pinchers
snap the spines of sea bass

as if they were pecans in the vise
of a nutcracker.

AMELIA EARHART AND FRED NOONAN CAPTURE AND EAT A GREEN SEA TURTLE ON NIKUMARORO ISLAND

It was crawling up the sand. It was heavy as a lame calf.

It took us both to drag it by its flippers from the reef to camp,

then toss it on its back by the embers.

Now what?

Its shell was hard as coral.
I had to pry
an iron wedge
between an underbelly seam, pound it with a conch

to finally draw its head,
which Amelia swiftly severed with our last shred of propeller.

We hollowed its body with cockle scoops and scallops.

Gore caked our arms
to the shoulders.
We rinsed in tidal pools.

The terns went insane.

They flapped
pink and shrieking in the bloody shoals.

All night we boiled the meat in recent rain.

We popped
one of the champagnes, toasted with tin-can flutes our luck.

I pounded the shell like a bongo.

Amelia blew across the bottle’s lip
in rhythm.

Next morning we carried the husk
to the beach,
launched it

on the tide.

Foam thrust
its white fingers through the cavity

and claimed it.

Author Biography

Paul David Adkins grew up in South Florida and lives in New York.