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Wednesday, June 04, 2014

WATCH VS. WARNING

by Marjorie Maddox





                                                                                        “Female-named hurricanes kill more
                                                                                          than male hurricanes because people
                                                                                          don’t respect them, study finds.”
                                                                                                            —Jason Samenow, 
                                                                                                   Washington Post,  June 2, 2014


Surely the whirling of this world
into some wind-gone-wild transport to Oz-
    opposite names the same tree-thrashing terror
or should, a double-edged Saffir-Simpson scale
of nurture/nature of respect in respect to
whose wrath shakes our quaking spirit
more, which also is just breath gone haywire,
this life built in the lungs and expired
into air as turbulent as any cascading
into climate-crashing crescendo
off the coast of somewhere.
Dorothy/Don, this isn’t
Kansas anymore.
      Each day
               the breeze
                 and we
                       pick up
                       more
                         vio-
                        lent-
                  ly
                brok-
          en.


Director of Creative Writing and professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox’s book,  Local News from Someplace Else (Wipf & Stock 2013), focuses on living in an unsafe world. In addition, she has a new ebook, Perpendicular As I ( Kindle version, Nook version, Kobo version).