SWANNANOA SEQUENCE

By Alyssa Beckitt

Notes from Swannanowhere

This is the road. It followed 
the river until the river swallowed it –

Whole bridges crushed 
under the wrath of her.

This is the in between place 
you have never heard of.

A blink. A town you could 
hold your breath through. 

This is the place of water trade, 
where we settled on the land 

of others, where we are desperate
to honor what is left. 

We are the corruption of Suwalinunnahi.
Where Catawba and Cherokee canoed 

for centuries. A blink. A breath. 

Our hearts beat on the banks,
and we wake in Swannanowhere.

Where our chickens pluck ticks
from the grass, kids toss black walnuts

at the bus stop, and a god-ray rises 
each morning over Appalachia. 

The blue ridge worn from watching the world 
since before we stepped on it –

Where we will keep on living and dying, 
the matter of us muddled in the dirt

we plunge our hands into, cultivating 
roots that vibrate like banjo strings 

giving every finger that dares pluck 
a tune thick callouses, a reminder

that instead of breaking we sing, dig
the grief from our bones knowing that we are 

the gulp the river tried to take and choked. 

When My Mother Visited Swannanoa 130 Days Later

She called our street a warzone –
It looks like a bomb went off. 

No, this is a disaster zone. It looks like
the river reached out over the banks

when there was nowhere else to go. 
A river does not know what a home 

is, what the difference is between
our wooden boxes and the boulders

residing alongside it. A bomb knows
its target. A bomb is dropped, while

a river spills. The spillway opened
with human orders. How can we not 

recognize this difference? Recognize
the debris, bodies, and cries of those 

left breathing. Recognize the way 
we all will be called survivors

someday with the Earth clawing away
from our grip. No, we must not say 

the river is a bomb for the limbs of 
the lost know what shrapnel is. No, 

the river did only what a river knows
to do, flowing with the force of rain. 

And we only do what we have always 
done. Reign. 

The Mermaids of Swannanoa 

I.

When rooftops became lifeboats
you lifted our babies to safety,

hoisted whole families above the rage
you were taught to hold in,

a rage the river slapped across 
the face of us, striking 

down what dared to live 
in its path. The river tore you away, 

the silt sliced gills into your neck, 
and the force twisted your legs 

into one iridescent fin of scales.

You are the transformation of rage
into love. The way it all hurts, 

the living and loving and dying.
We tell ourselves this shimmering 

myth, preserve you in a way
the water could not. 

That glitter in the mud we plunge 
our boots in everyday must be 

your scales, a bread crumb trail 
you leave for us. 

How do we dig a way out
in any other story?  

We bite onto hope, a dancing fishing lure 
tugging us through the wake, hinting 

that you are out there, pure muscle 
commanding the rage.  

II.

After all the leaves fell and we were not on the evening news anymore,
but the debris still clung to the treetops like a fixed thing, park benches
and steel siding lingering through the season like evergreen leaves, I looked
for you in the river. I looked for the flick of your tail in the lapping water, 
a glimmer of your persistence, a flash in the corner of my eye whispering
how to be brave. I looked but saw only the water that took you, murky and
flowing through all the holes and pathways no one asked for. I look for you 
needing to know how you did it, how when God damned our world to rubble, 
and we came out axing what was left of what we built and bled for did you let go?  
I don’t know how to keep waking up. I cling to a roof I was never on, 
one you never made it to either. I think I am still dying in the morning 
with my fingers wrapped around the gutter. 

Because There Are Not Enough Words for Grief

I do not wash my car. 

The debris bears witness 
to the dirt taking root inside me. 

I cry out and in 
with nowhere to put 

all that wrenches 
through my living body. 

My living body 
echoing cries 

each night, 
waiting in bed 

for the river to come back
and take it too. 

I dip my hand 
over the edge 

of the mattress 
to feel the cool water 

bite into my skin,
pull me away to a place 

where silt glitters 
like treasure in the matted 

hair of its inhabitants,
where siren screams 

are lullabies we all 
lean in to hear –

I only ever brush 
this air, this air
shamelessly filling my lungs. 

Because there are not 
enough words, I grieve

barefoot in the mud
trying to sink, 

letting the muck 
creep into my airways.

Will it to shape 
itself into my trachea, 

try to feel what it is 
to have sand 

pumping through my veins.

There are not enough words 
so I close my mouth 

to air, hold the dirt
in my teeth, and bare down 

on what was washed away.

Alyssa Beckitt is a poet living and writing in the Swannanoa Valley in North Carolina. Her work grapples with the collective trauma of climate disasters and what it means to survive one. She received her MFA from the University of North Carolina Greensboro and her PhD from the University of Louisiana Lafayette. Her work can be found in Four Way Review, Red Rock Review, Waccamaw Journal of Contemporary Literature, Portland Review, and others.