Weather of the Body

I was smoking pot in the kitchen with my mother
when my sister, wrapped in clouds, filled the room
with lightning.

Her words moved through my stoned mother,
a wire pulled through a lump of clay;
her body held together

by the terrycloth belt of her bathrobe.
Each vertebrae in my spine tingled like radio static.
I closed my eyes, my teeth fell out.

I ran outside to my car, startled a bird
sleeping beneath the undercarriage.
It fluttered up and out as if from within me.

Its wings, so frenzied with movement,
broke apart right then and there;
my mother grieving her failed marriage,

hail cascading down her face, my sister,
her mouth wide open and electric shouting at me –
you don’t live here anymore, Matthew, you don’t understand. 







Originally appeared in Cimarron Review