by Cathleen Calbert
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| Source: University of Wisconsin |
or narrow corridor
a filament of concentrated moisture
(like a fire faerie’s little vag)
like Lilith, with so many titles:
tropical connection, tropical plume, moisture plume,
(which I believe was indeed a feminine protection
product from the 1970’s),
water vapor surge—I can feel that for sure,
cloud band (the most lightweight heavy metal)
river in the sky and moody to boot apparently.
whatever. words are fun
until they’re not anymore
(insurgents stormed the capitol
and my heart froze over—how’s that
for wording).
now the country is supposed to forget
what we heard, what we saw.
we’re onto weather:
unusually huge plops of snow
fall on poor Chicago
while back at home
the Pacific Coast Highway fell
down the mountainside
as if the dreams of a little MG,
a bottle of wine, rock and rolling
through the turns in Big Sur
meant nothing. You should know:
when the atmospheric river makes landfall
it releases and transforms
into something we can
touch and call
another name
if we want to.
Cathleen Calbert’s writing has appeared in Ms., The Nation, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the author of four books of poems: Lessons in Space, Bad Judgment, Sleeping with a Famous Poet, and The Afflicted Girls. Her awards include the 92ndStreet Y Discovery Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Sheila Motton Book Prize, and the Mary Tucker Thorp Professorship at Rhode Island College.