MOORE TORNADO: MAY 2013
The ultrasmooth conical surfaces of cloud, the ultrasmooth spinning cloud, the cloud spun into ultrasmooth and still cone shapes, the water tank lifted from its trusses.
To feel the face pressed against the warm belly of the horse, the ribs, the flank, the spattered droplets of rain in its hair, the warm hollow sound of its breath.
Hail stones heavy in the grass, slick, wet, eyelike, reflecting the sleek bank of cloudlight, the blue pulse of sparks from a busted transformer, the power line skipping on the surface of the road, whipped by the wind.
Red rim of the nostril, the ear twitching as if there were flies, breath the hot empty bellows, and then that larger sound,
amber-veined light, thistle down, the dull blank-grained bodies of horses moving together in the black, guttural collapse.
____________________________________________________________________
Author’s note: this is the first poem in a series about the Moore tornado that swept across Moore, OK, in 2013.
____________________________________________________________________
MARGARET REGES is from Michigan. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her recent honors include the 2012 Page Davidson Clayton Prize for Emerging Poets from the Michigan Quarterly Review, two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony, and a full fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Iowa City, IA.
____________________________________________________________________
Read more by Margaret Reges:
Lots of poems at Ink Node