Great Lakes Cyclone

poetry by Liz Chereskin

It is coming on the backs of stampeding bison
	tearing across Doppler radar
		a red flesh wound carved
	 through the Midwest

(I know
	the tail skin
		of sewer rats can feel the pin-prick
			slow drop in barometric pressure
	as they peer up at us) 

We built our shelter and
		I trust it to last as I see these clouds collecting
			in the sky like a dirty down comforter
My love I will help you
			put on your galoshes
		before I slide
				into mine if our basement floods
			or the sirens sound too loudly

As the lake flails
		over piers and rocks
				and geese crumple into debris
	we can go out and taste the
		acid rain if we
			do our best not to get it in our eyes

The meteorologists say to stay
	away from the trees with leaves
			like sails and branches of snapping bones

But when this is all over you will see
	how the wind  blew so hard through
		those boughs
	stripped the leaves then tessellated them
		into the rain-shellacked cement

and there will be the ones dried
	in the afterstorm sun
			that will get blown back
		up into the oaks and we will all see
the light shining through them
				turning our sky into stained glass

Liz Chereskin’s poems have appeared in The Cypress Dome, where her work won the Editors’ Award in the 2007 edition of the magazine, the Word5: Text + Art exhibit, and forthcoming in The Floorboard Review. Liz is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Columbia College Chicago.

Tags: Front, Great Lakes Cyclone, Liz Chereskin, Poetry

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 14th, 2011 at 9:54 am and is filed under Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.