Storm
Clouds burn holes into the world
when I look away. The static parts—
gulls ripple over sands, salmon mingle with air. Churns
turn again, a bend feathered against beaten stone.
Sandgrains encrust a palm as it bifurcates
into oblivion.
A clot
a clod
a wingbone.
Hail strikes the glass.
Cormorants flock on the curbstones
beside a suburban sea. Other worlds begin
to break through
the paint & the plastic—
daybreak could bring
anything.
Pompeii
The earth has teeth.
Dog-hippos emerge from the drunkard’s heart to traipse through pillars & fountains, to
bellow alone into the dark, dreaming of Napoli, of the Piscina Mirabilis. August brings
new monsters. A gulper eel with the legs of an ostrich preys upon leopards under the
archways. Water ghosts stain the cistern, turquoise flickers whisper aquamarine. Actor’s
masks take flight, linen grimaces pelting the mountain, eyeholes open to the sky. Without
theater the world sinks, revealing cuspids, a hint of skull.
We are the Gorgons behind the wall.
Sulfur, lapilli, boiling air—
our new faces rain down.
My love once tasted an amber sun.
Now she pierces the horizon, forever
mouthing cakes of dust.
____________________
Amee Nassrene Broumand is an Iranian-American poet from the Pacific Northwest. Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in Barren Magazine, Empty Mirror, The Ginger Collect, Menacing Hedge, Sundog Lit, & elsewhere. She served as the March 2018 Guest Editor of Burning House Press. Find her on Twitter @AmeeBroumand.
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