Water Damage

When our basement swamped

for the third time that year, my father

stepped into the knee-deep muck,

turned, then waited for me

to take his picture, to preserve

this failure of foundation

for insurance purposes, and because

the body, above all, provides

a sense of scale. Right then

we should have known

our house was a sinkhole

that banks would come for, seize

and foreclose. Beneath the polish

of our foyer and cream-tiled

kitchen, black mold rippled

with toxins. Freshly applied paint

bubbled off the walls. But mostly,

I recall how my father looked

in that dank, greenish pool

like all posed children: present

and lost. Or like an orphan

who has not spoken in years.

Or exactly like my father, weary

from bailing, emptied by the flash

of all resources vanished; his reflection

sunk in the stink just below.

Object

Black Mold

About the Artist

Jared Harél’s debut poetry collection, GO BECAUSE I LOVE YOU, was awarded the Diode Editions Poetry Award and published by Diode Editions in 2018. He’s also been awarded the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from American Poetry Review, the William Matthews Poetry Prize from Asheville Poetry Review, and two Artist Grants from Queens Council on the Arts. New poems have recently appeared in 32 Poems, APR, Bennington Review, New Ohio Review and THRUSH. Harél lives in Queens, NY with his wife and two kids.