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kathryn petruccelli

Lightning

Once, when my grandmother was just a girl, lightning 
entered             the kitchen window      burned
             a black path                    across the floor. 

It wasn't the last time it spoke to her: 

                             a carriage ride in the forest, a storm, 
a flash and a crack                                     the horse rears, tears
in mad terror through the trees, she does not know
when it will end. 

                                         Her hearing gone,     
she felt                 the storms instead, tasted the metallic air. 
She knew the story:                      a man who survived 

strike after strike
— his arm scarred, 
              fiery fractals
— lightning 
                          branding him, insistent god in love 
with its            own image. 

            Fate has its clear dominion, 
             its rhythm       so hard               to beat.
 
Each day she set the table for the next meal 
                           at the end of the one before,
as if she could bar       the door with patterns of civility.

Through the Depression,
               nothing to set down
                                          on her pressed tablecloth, her life replete
                              with scorch                  of debt and favors owed.

And after the divorce, old photos torn             in half, 
twirl of the mistress secretary’s skirt like a flame to her eye.
Everywhere she turned it taunted her
— 
                                                and still she would try to hold it 
at bay,               turning off the news, turning down her hearing aid
                           while in her mind a sky blazed with heat.

                                       At the end of her days,
she sat erect on her chaise lounge, 
              coat buttoned, purse perched in her lap, ready 
              to run.

S. Erin Batiste
Kathryn Petruccelli holds an M.A. in teaching English language learners. Her professional life has included translating “Hotel California” for Hungarian high schoolers and anthologizing poetry by rival gang members. A 2020 Best of the Net nominee, she was a finalist for the 2019 Omnidawn Broadside Poetry Prize and past winner of San Francisco's LitQuake essay contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Poet Lore, Whale Road Review, december, SWWIM, Ruminate, Tinderbox, Catamaran Literary Reader, and others. She teaches online writing workshops from western Massachusetts. 
Art: Molly Dunham
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