“Female-named hurricanes kill
more
than
male hurricanes because people
don’t
respect them, study finds.”
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).