Tonight the weather report says tornadoes won’t throw our homes moonward. But I keep driving. Two blocks over
I hear the train they say comes only to rip up real estate. If at home, I’d open a window, lie
in the tub, hold onto myself. Here, I have nothing to keep me from spinning two miles south. Once my sister did
pirouettes through the city park saying, I’m a leaf blown by a twister. Four years later, she boarded a train
with a man who turned her head six times against the edge of a knife. That day was supposed to be sunny,
but it rained for eight days straight. Tonight, too, the forecast is wrong. Tornadoes are hanging homes
from the swirled horizon, unstaking fences that keep the earth penned, mark the road that I’m driving.
Ash Bowen is a first-year PhD student at the University of North Texas. He has work forthcoming or appearing in various publications, including Slipstream, The Eleventh Muse, Pebble Lake Review, Stickman Review, Red Wheelbarrow, and Shampoo.
