Laughing Till We Cried

	         after the quake

Taylor Graham

In the fifth-story room
of the hotel, you wouldn’t talk
of anything we’d seen. You
wouldn’t talk. So why 
did I keep on laughing
till the floor shook?

Nothing funny about arms
sticking out of concrete
smashed at the shoulders,
and the streets disjointed.
How can you just keep crying
about coffins stacked
at every corner?

Most hotels didn’t have five stories
standing anymore. You drank
Corona warm to wash
the sweet dead dust down,
till you teetered like the after-
shocks we couldn’t count.

My cola burbled from its can,
as flat and brown as blood
that’s three days spilled.
And I kept on learning
how to laugh like a collapsed 
lung.