Hurricanes Irma & María in Puerto Rico

BY MARÍA LUISA ARROYO CRUZADO

Born near the Cape Verde Islands, Hurricane Irma swished
her skirts of winds & rain, toyed with Puerto Rico,
stole light from 1,000,000 Puerto Ricans, her eye
on Florida. Some say she roared past like a train 
that descended from the skies. Weeks later,
María stole light from 3,000,000 more, stripped trees
of their green, birds of their breath & feathers, roofs
of their means to shelter. Some say she screamed
like a sea of women being buried alive in water.

 

María Luisa Arroyo Cruzado was educated at Colby (BA), Tufts (MA), and Harvard (ABD) in German, her third language. She has one full-length collection of poems, Gathering Words / Recogiendo Palabras, and two chapbooks, Flight and Destierro Means More than Exile. Arroyo’s community-based workshops garnered her recognition, including being named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Springfield, Massachusetts (2014-2016), and a 2016 New England Public Radio Arts & Humanities Award recipient. In July 2015, Arroyo earned an MFA in creative writing from Solstice at Pine Manor College. She is an assistant professor of writing and first-year studies at Bay Path University.

[Purchase Issue 16 here.]

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Hurricanes Irma & María in Puerto Rico

Related Posts

whale sculpture on white background

September 2025 Poetry Feature: Earth Water Fire Poems, a Conversation

LISA ASAGI
"We and the whales, / and everyone else, / sleep and wake in bodies / that have a bit of everything / that has ever lived. Forests, oceans, / horse shoe crabs, horses, / orange trees in countless of glasses of juice, / lichen that once grew / on the cliffsides of our ancestors, / deepseated rhizomes, and stars. // Even stars are made

Hitting a Wall and Making a Door: A Conversation between Phillis Levin and Diane Mehta

DIANE MEHTA and PHILLIS LEVIN
This conversation took place over the course of weeks—over daily phone calls and long emails, meals when they were in the same place, and a weekend in the Connecticut countryside. The poets share what they draw from each other’s work, and the work of others, exploring the pleasures of language, geometric movement, and formal constraint.

Anna Malihot and Olena Jenning's headshots

August 2025 Poetry Feature: Anna Malihon, translated by Olena Jennings

ANNA MALIHON
The girl with a bullet in her stomach / runs across the highway to the forest / runs without saying goodbye / through the news, the noble mold of lofty speeches / through history, geography, / curfew, a day, a century / She is so young that the wind carries / her over the long boulevard between bridges