Ode to Gonaives

I smell you before I even see you.

Veiled in dust heaps, the garbage still reeks.

A beach town with no beach

You have consumed any beauty the sea might offer.

Battered by a hurricane a few years before

The Noah-type flooding showed it was unfit for life—

A Sodom and Gomorrah punishment by water—

Yet people came back.

Home to the riot that led to the coup

Now a home to the UN to temper a brew.

Nature doth thrive in forms most unwanted—

Cockroaches, mangy dogs, skeeters and mices.

Scorching heat leads to much suffering and sweating.

All of this leads us to bestow a grand title

Most wretched city in the New World.