"The Flood" by Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo’s piece “The Flood” is one that I’m still working to fully absorb and understand. I chose to write about it for the blog, however, because this more than any other poem – accept perhaps for Seamus Heaney’s “Punishment,” which I’d say drew even with Harjo’s – struck me continuously with the power and intimacy of its imagery. I was continuously awed by it, lit up by it, and in love with it. “When I walk the stairway of water into the abyss, I return as the wife of the watermonster in a blanket of time decorated with swatches of cloth and feathers from our favorite clothes” (Harjo, 381).  This poem contains such an amazing balance between mystery and reality, and this was one of the quotes that made me most feel it. The words, “…in a blanket of time decorated with swatches of cloth and feathers from our favorite clothes” in particular make me feel the weight and strength of generations, of myth, and of timelessness (381). I can see the blanket, with patches and feathers, and the use of the word “our” in reference to “favorite clothes” again broadens the scope of the moment, making the blanket a creation of more than just one woman (381).

     Other quotes: “My imagination swallowed me like a mica sky” (382), and “… the blushing skin of the suddenly vulnerable” (382), were so vivid that they brought the piece to life for me. I could see the sky, bright and cool and broad enough to swallow someone whole. I could see the blood and the skin of something only just made human. The line, “The power of the victim is a power that will always be reckoned with, one way or the other” (383), captivated me with its abstract power. The awareness that a victim holds power in the minds of others, perhaps haunting people with possibility, perhaps demanding recourse, perhaps because everyone has been a victim at some instance in their lives. I also loved the quote, “The watersnake was a story no one told anymore. They’d entered a drought that no one recognized as a drought, the convenience store a signal of temporary amnesia” (Harjo 383). In these lines, when she’s become the watersnake herself, and yet is unrecognizable to people who no longer even speak about the myth, who don’t know it existed anymore, I can feel the way in which humanity forgets, transforming and leaving behind elements of itself until it’s rendered blind. In the “drought” a word that doesn’t carry the same terror or pain for a society so disconnected, is unrecognizable too (383). The world is unaware of the deprivation of its own state. Reading those lines, I feel our loss and vulnerability. I feel the anticipation of Harjo's “flood” (383).