True Story
The river once flooded the K through 8
school in my hometown. When the waters took
weeks to recede, they held classes in the
town’s only peach-colored outlet mall. Lunch
in the food court. Economics in a
house of commerce. Recess playing four-square
in the parking spaces painted white on
greying blacktop, dodging cars. But it won’t
become a storied place. The town let the
mall fall apart, torn down for a Super
Wal-Mart where I once bought crusty bread and
salad greens with my dad on a health kick
and this was the cheapest produce in town.
I attended the new elementary
and middle built out of the old school’s kind
of red brick, Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie Style (it’s
the Midwest) built further from the river
bed. In the sun-soaked nook of the middle
school library I read a book written
about those kids in that mall during that
flood, going to school. I wonder: Next time
the waters rise, what incongruous place
will house our learning? The second amendment
in a Bass Pro Shop, hunting rifles on
the walls. Gladiators in a professional
football stadium after a hurricane.
Science experiments in a farm-to-table
restaurant. A while back, people just called
that home economics.
About the Author: Caroliena Cabada is an MFA candidate for Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. She serves as co-managing editor of Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment. Her poetry appears in Eunoia Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and Lyrical Iowa.
Image Credit: Carl Mydans “Ohio River in flood, Louisville, Kentucky” (1936) The Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 