The Tornado Visits the Town — Blackbird Archive

← v12n2, Fall 2013

The tornado waits to become itself,

slowly turning above the interstate.

Radio words crackle through the air:

major rotation, place of shelter, but also

that was AC/DC with and

so I said Lady, you can keep the ring! and

folks, a donation today will—

This, the tornado sees, is a town

in need. Bankrupt of the fear

that makes life perfect and sharp

as a shattered plate.

But the tornado cannot stop. Will not.

The world cannot stop turning, and this minute

the tornado is the world. Cars lift like birds,

trees bullet, everything is collapse.

The tornado has no regrets.

Has no regrets.

nature violence place

Catherine Pierce

Catherine Pierce’s most recent book of poems is The Tornado Is the World (Saturnalia, 2016). She is also the author of The Girls of Peculiar (Saturnalia, 2012), winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Prize, and Famous Last Words (Saturnalia, 2008), winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry (2015, 2011), Boston Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She co-directs the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. Photo by Megan Bean