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.
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.
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