Flooded Town

Yonkers, Oklahoma, was abandoned and flooded
To create Lake Fort Gibson in 1933.

Eighty years later, in the scrub oaks of
Northern Wagoner County, it remains in
Foundation puzzles and a one-room skeleton
Of the school where Cherokees and whites
Learned together until water was needed more.
Founded by a KO&G man homesick
For his boyhood in New York, it was perhaps
Never meant to be, never meant to survive.

Trees forty-feet tall grow limbless and slender where
The teacher stood, chalk in hand, barbwire emerges
From the very middle of the grey bark of more
Oaks at the perimeter, fallen stone becomes
Rubble, becomes possum home, becomes
The focal point for photographs we post online,
That never capture the ghosts we become
And the ghosts created by thirst and time.

–Shaun Perkins