Brittney Uecker

Brittney Uecker (she/her) is a queer writer, librarian, and mother living in central Montana. Her fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry has been published in Pithead Chapel, HAD, Taco Bell Quarterly, and others. She is @bonesandbeer on Instagram.

Easy read of the poem in the image above:

A severe thunderstorm warning has been issued for the following counties

Cumulonimbus blooming to the north,

though it’s hard to see bruises in the dark.

Dad says, “it’s the one right there that scares me,”

flat obelisk of slate hovering over

the neighbors with the Trump flag snapping

in its own chaotic storm.

There’s no thunder,

because when lightening doesn’t

make contact with the ground,

it can sneak its potential past.

Just flash frames spidering through the sky

like the veins that blossom behind my knees

and throb in the summertime.

Helen Hunt taught my son what

a funnel cloud looks like,

how to pinpoint the fever pitch of circulation

when it’s about to appear

from the pregnant belly of a cloud,

so he says, over and over,

“it’s gonna drop! it’s gonna drop!”

How natural, a thunderstorm like birth,

how the drop is the indicator,

how rainwater wets the runway,

how the rip contracts to force out glistening beads of fury.

As the hail drums on the roof like a bomb,

a liquid solid sound,

punches holes in my mom’s hostas,

shreds geraniums like tissue,

I can’t help but think episiotomy.

I can’t help but think placental abruption.

I can’t help but think about the dimples that will be left in the hood of my car

like those scattered across my thighs.