Adriana Beltrano

poetry

Adriana Beltrano is a poet from Jupiter, Florida. She is pursuing her MFA in poetry at Johns Hopkins University, where she is a managing editor of the Hopkins Review. She was named a 2024-25 Jake Adam York Prize finalist and was selected by Diane Seuss as an honorable mention for the 2025 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize. Her work is forthcoming or can be found in Passages North, Little Patuxent Review, and HAD.

 

Hurricane Shutters

When we had panel shutters, the ones that screw into the wall, my father had to go all around the perimeter of the house with his power drill, sometimes bringing his son and big white sweaty tent of a wifebeater, every inconvenience met with derision. He had a meanness to him, one I’ve inherited like a rusted interlocking bracelet I’m not sure what to do with. After, he’d slip into the house through the front door; we’d go dark, flashlights brought to the bathroom, battery-powered radio on the glass table we lifted in from the patio. The wind would batter the metal like a new world wanting inside, and when it was done, my father would go to the slimmest window panel, write the name of what we’d come together to weather: Frances Jeanne Wilma Irma.

“ Growing up, we had a metal hurricane window shutter that my dad would write the names of storms on. Eventually, it became a list; names filled each ridge of the shutter. This poem came from reflection on the process of preparing for a hurricane, the day or so spent indoors in the dark with flashlights and radios, and the aftermath of cleaning up and taking it all down. ”

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