The Storm

Originally published in Words Apart, February 2014

Caught in the maw of it,
it’s easy to believe
in God’s opposite:
an absence of tenderness,
logic, fury whistling
like a thousand tin cans
dragged from a fleet
of wedding hearses,
rice in the tire ruts.

Hail hat-taps
at my windows
like hard confetti.
No stars –
they’ve been upstaged
by clouds. Behind one
there’s a sullen glow
where the diva moon
is trying to shine.

Nights like this
I dream I am lightning,
or a cigarette lit
too long, my body
a lighthouse,
beacon made of bone.