Low-Lying Country
— Laboni Islam
watch
sea level rise like fever spilling
over
mudlines. everything
stilts itself.
Jamuna. Meghna. Padma.
to live alluvially near three rivers rising
or
in slums with more than miles can hold
is to choose
between catastrophes.
Child
remember water was your first teacher —
knot
your resiliency
around your waist.
dis-
mantle your tilting house move
farther and farther from the shoreline
an open parenthesis
where cyclones whirling through names will eventually
make landfall on yours
(your field left open, flooded