On the first Tuesday of the month

they test the tornado siren in a town              a thousand miles away

           from everyone I love
                                               the cat cowers  in the darkest corner

of the closet               my mom calls
                                                           unrelated events

           but I woke up              all those miles between us
                                                                                  at exactly the moment
                                                                                                                    of impact

Five living kids got into a car
three came out.

Somewhere between here                  and the place I used to call home         the landscape flattens

                         even the mountains  look like hills                 when compared

their surfaces a topography of loss                                                                             in the absence
of glaciers—scars.  

                                                                                    Our sister slits the insides of her thighs 

                                                                                                one for every day that her friends

are still dead
and our brother loses ten pounds

           sick with grief              a cyst protrudes

                        from his pancreas       is painful to touch

                                                                        and afraid the doctor will say                cancer again

                                    he refuses every appointment

                                                                                               I’m telling myself there is nothing

                                                            my being there can solve   crying in the shower

The cat on the tub edge          cries too           pokes at my foot
                                                                                                            recognizes drowning
                                                           This is what I wanted                                        isn’t it?

            This chance to see myself                    as something other    than the eldest
                                                                            daughter, taught to solve. 

                                                                       Yet here I am              with nothing to do  

                                                                                                                                  but grieve  

                                                the ground opens  

                                                                        as sinkholes 

                                                                                      gasping mouths  

                                                                        our collective
                     mourning.  

Red

The last clutch of holly berries
on a bush plucked bare. Two male
cardinals. A Christmas bow caught
in the underbrush. The man’s face
while he yells at me
for having asked too many questions,
for having required his humanity.
The barn, six horses strung
between it and an apple tree, now bare.
The skin of my chest against each octave
of his raised voice. My father,
in every memory. The oxidized dirt
of a fresh grave. Blood. A warning.
Scattered nylon petals. The Stop
sign. The body when reduced to this.