Three Poems

by C. Cimmone

Nikolas Noonan

Tornado

I used to love thunderstorms at night,

But the lightening reminds me that I’m afraid

Of the night when the power goes out

And everything dies

As the earth spins out of control.

I hear the neighbors walking from the kitchen

To the bathroom —

Eerie footsteps like ghosts in the attic,

Boards cracking and pinching in the still air.

I worry my door is now paper thin:

Bad guys know I have no light.

They can push on the doorknob and the door just

Opens.

He can hide behind the thunder

And move with the rain.

I hold my breath as I stare at the sky,

Waiting for lightning to reveal a funnel in the air,

A spinning cloud of everything they warned us about,

But I have nowhere to go

So I try to remember something God would want me to say.

“Deliver us from evil” is all I can remember

So I repeat it over and over until the lights surge again

With electric waves and I have

A second chance.

The Dogs Are All Dead

I drove him to the city

And talked to him the whole time,

But I never said where we were going.

Victoria called me that same night.

Hers, seventeen years almost,

Had gone on too long and she knew it.

Naomi called me that Saturday to say

He was taking medicine, making him comfortable —

She couldn’t do what I had done.

It’s a long Sunday when I think about

How all the dogs are dead.

I’m different than I used to be.

I don’t want to search for anything new

Because I watched them suck out

Those years of my life

When they threw away the needles.

All that was left was a hard carcass,

Like a waste left on the side of the road —

Something that used to be something

To someone.

Nine O’Clock

They are firing up their furnaces.

I drank vodka last night from a little bottle

The priest saw me hide in my purse.

I’m no better than the puff.

I know there was no saving him

But people like to blame.

I’m here, the martyr of the county,

The broken one I know you’ll forget —

Another female in your rolodex,

Someone you knew when we were young.

They are pushing him in the chamber.

The birds are pecking at trash.

This phone call is breaking me down.

I want to be your charity;

I want to be your just cause.

There are bones spilling all over.

Meet me in Columbus;

I have a little cash in my wallet.

Let me be your exception;

Let me be your beginning.

My end has passed

And you’re the only place

I have to go.

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C. Cimmone is an author, comic, and poet living in Texas.