Author’s Note

This piece started because of a single lyric in a song.

A line about EBT that made me laugh a little because my immediate reaction was: “Do you know who listens to your music? We know exactly what that means.”

And that memory spiral hit instantly.

This poem isn’t really about poverty in the dramatic sense. It’s about environmental memory. The small things that stay with you long after you leave certain stages of your life behind.

Dry ramen because there wasn’t money for extras. Hot concrete in triple-digit summers. Waiting for sprinklers to turn on just so the neighborhood kids could cool off. The strange rhythm of knowing exactly when EBT would hit every month because that date mattered.

I grew up in California’s Central Valley, and people who haven’t lived there sometimes underestimate how much the environment shapes you. The heat feels physical in memory. The dryness becomes part of your emotional vocabulary.

That’s where the title comes from.

“Drought resistant” isn’t just about the land. It’s about the people too.

And while this piece carries humor and regional slang intentionally, there’s something sincere underneath it: a complicated kind of affection for the place that raised me.

Not because it was easy. Not because it was glamorous.

But because it’s part of me anyway.

— Rowan Evans

Drought Resistant
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I grew up poor-poor,
couldn’t even afford
water for my ramen.
Ate it dry—
standing on hot concrete
cooking my feet.

It was that
Central Valley heat—

Back when
kids were askin’—

is it our turn today,
to let the water spray?
We just wanted to be
kids in play—

Do you know
what it’s like
to ride a bike
through a
convection oven?

That was my
environment.

The Central Valley,
where even our
trees are hard—

drought resistant,
like we wish our
pockets are.

The 5th of every month
EBT hit—

no brand names,
couldn’t afford it.
We shopped for
Great Value—

Glacier Ranch
Tortilla Chips.

Go ahead
and diss me,
dismiss me.

But your diss is
Peter Pan,
it will Neverland.

California in my blood,
California in my DNA—
it’s hella tight,
it’s hella cool.

Yea’ dude.

Journey into the Hexverse…

[Escaped to the Page]
“Escaped to the Page” is a confessional meta-poem about individuality, artistic identity, and surviving through writing. Blending sharp confidence with emotional vulnerability, the poem explores the difference between shared labels and lived experience—and the ways art becomes inseparable from the life behind it.

[Ink as a Second Mouth]
“Ink as a Second Mouth” explores the distance between thought and speech, and the ways writing can become a form of survival, continuity, and self-translation. Through confessional imagery and reflections on growth, identity, and articulation, the poem examines what it means to keep becoming through language.

If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]