After a 2-year drought, the city’s 
membranes thicken, become hazy. 

This poem should be called “waiting 
for petrichor” but I never liked Beckett
 
–that much. A flood of biblical proportions 
says the newscaster. I wouldn’t go so far. 

When I visited Rio de Janeiro the streets 
disappeared under a deluge for 24 hours. 

It wasn’t biblical, just tropical and wondrous. 
When it rains, people look for shelter, water 

an undesirable partner–– it’s not easy to see 
body as home––I think of Federico and his 

“romance sonámbulo”, of the gypsy woman 
in love, waiting, waiting. She let the water 

take her, the river as lover. Green is death,
according to critics.  Tropical plants would 

disagree. It’s easy to get lost in technicalities, 
to science the natural cycles of life. Because 

I live in the desert, I always think in green. 
Green is longing, home in sounds of verde.
Leonora Simonovis is a Venezuelan American poet and the author of Study of the Raft,
winner the 2021 Colorado Prize for Poetry and Honorable Mention at the 2022 International
Latino Book Awards. Leonora’s poetry has been featured in The Prose Poem, Whale Road
Review, SWWIM, DMQ Review, Verse Daily, and others. She has been the recipient of
fellowships and residencies from The Poetry Foundation, VONA, the Vermont Studio Center,
Esperimento Sul Respiro and Sundress Academy for the Arts.