The Thundering

Amanda Auchter

for L.

Late August and you are a cigarette burn in radio-lit dusk.  The availability
                                           of means: cold steel on your tongue.  Your mouth 

fills with what becomes massive history—hole in the throat, your punctured
                                           brain on a back wall.  Your name rain-smeared, 

inking the street, every floor you’ve walked.  Beside the door,

a pair of shoes, an umbrella, your black coat, things in minutes
                                                       you will no longer need, 

carry with you.  In the white-

                                                                   noise of fan hum, car horns,
you roll bullets in your palm.  You want for a moment to still this—

                                                                   a book left open on the table, the rain-
                                                                   light,  cooled coffee in the glass pot.  

The first sign is early waking, the failure of sleep.  The last is how
                    you sit in your green chair and write your name at the end of a page, 

crush paper and ash into a bowl.  You move in and out of air.  The thundering
                                                      dark calls you.  Close the window.