By Dorsía Smith Silva
And it begins on a spontaneous Thursday
at 9 am with a laughed-at reminder that you
will only have water on alternating days: 24
hours yes, 24 hours no. Pause: fill the bathtubs,
wash clothes, scrub the floors, water the plants,
fill buckets, bottles, and jugs, place the buckets
in the bathrooms, and line the hallways with
the bottles and jugs. Illusion: You wait for the
rain to come like a windup clock without reference
and look for El Corraízo to shy away from the apron-tied
annotations of PELIGROSO markers. Another thing
to do: hear the warmed-up excuses—drought,
sediment blocks 60% usage of water, government
does not have the money to clean the riverbed,
blah, blah, blah. It is foolish to pray for the money
to buy a cistern, book a trip to the hotel pool, or
dream about an extra hour of water. You might as
well put on your cowboy hat and look for a new saint.
Dorsía Smith Silva is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Superstition Review, Porter House Review, Portland Review, Pidgeonholes, SAND, and elsewhere. She is also the editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering and the co-editor of six books.