Hurricane Ida, August 29, 2021
—Maria, Donald, and Emily
Our friends who shelter us
grew a Maypop vine
these last three years
so they could offer food
to the Pensacola caterpillars
who gorge now on the poison
(I'm told) of its blooms
which are purple
and intricate as geodes.
The edge of the storm
tracked us here. Its tongue lolls,
huge and gray, across the horizon.
Ancestral butterflies
flash orange against the grass
like an emergency.
Some of the caterpillars
have wrapped themselves in cloaks
and hang still as they liquefy.
Family Evacuation with Gulf Fritillary Caterpillars by Andy Young
Andy Young's second full-length collection, Museum of the Soon to Depart, was published in October by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She is also the author of All Night It Is Morning (Diálogos Press, 2014) and four chapbooks. She grew up in southern West Virginia and has lived most of her adult life in New Orleans, where she teaches at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work has recently appeared in Greensboro Review and Michigan Quarterly Review, and her poetry film "Pharmacy Museum Tour Guide, New Orleans" won the Berlin Indie Film Award, the Ottawa Film Award, will soon be featured in the New Orleans Film Festival, the Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Awards and many others. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers, her work has been translated into several languages. andyyoung.org, @andyyoungpoet
