Thunder Season
A season of thunder
and crashing
comes in May.
Tornadoes,
heat lightning.
Brilliance lights the sky
and one year zapped
our television set.
It is difficult to leave
in any season,
certainly now,
with the dog to let indoors
and out, with skies raging
with people raging
with all the world violent
and all the doors closed.
• • •
Michael Finnegan
You reach out strongly,
insistently, to touch. But,
when I reach out my hand,
caress you—weekdays,
or on Saturdays, or any time—
you disable your phone,
drink heavily, and smoke—
a cocoon of white and wine,
sick, sickening, until you are numb
and gone, into what others see
as smallness,
but what must be huge
to hold your horror, and perhaps
vast, momentary bliss.
For a few days, you recover.
Then you begin again.
I grow sick too, and back off
into increasing emptiness––
where once my thoughts,
my arms, held a celestial realm.
• • •
After receiving a master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Denver, Alita Pirkopf became increasingly interested in feminist interpretations of literature. Eventually, she enrolled in a poetry class at the University of Denver taught by Bin Ramke. Poetry became a long-term focus and obsession. Her work has appeared in dozens of journals including Cimarron Review, Maryland Literary Review, Vox Poetica, and Willow Springs Review.