‘Weathered’ by Kari Flickinger

Pole
by Bobby Miller

Weathered

Weathered is how we might say resilient.

Cracked. Dust
           -spattered. Wind           -thrashed. 

Flood might be a close-haunting of place.

I try not to stare 
as the heavens fumble in their sequins—
the thread of one specific cloud 
           blisters the bay 
until her bustle comes loose.

Shells            sheen, anemone
dying species of stars scatter among the divide—
their wasting rolls faster 
[faster!]            along red tidelines.

A centrifugal crack snaps the sky wide
           as the system haunts
much faster, imminent.

Luminosity dies away as the light
repels the haze— a viscosity 
           choked up storm
                      cells.
Even the cheap seats, further up 
are battered      drift-strewn
           tidelines.

Imagine trying to make sense
of your world with the same metaphors.
The never-ending loop of it. Returning
and re-returning.

[Get out of the fucking tide!
           I tell myself.
You cannot drink the whole storm.]
           There 
is nothing lovely left 
that has not already been tested
           measured, weighed 
by the hand and the scale
           a scale and a fin
in a hard rain—we already know
           is gonna come

and come again
and come again
and come again
and and and
and the drops 

will die off, set off.

[Pull yourself out of the cellar.
Peel off your own skin. Don’t leave it all 
to sandblast winds]

           Taste the season. No, wind. 
No wind can force this window.
No winded alter self is running on her knees
or elbows. The grass isn’t bent under motor.
The hurricane winds don’t touch this state.
Not bent over backwards

The roses and I have not been curved 
by the rush of water or cloud formations.

No earthcrack. Tremor. No swallowing dust 
will bow me to such a surf.

Imagine us on the dunes, displacing 
our tidal roots.


Kari Flickinger is the author of The Gull and the Bell Tower (Femme Salvé Books, 2020). Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the SFPA Rhysling Award. She is an alumna of UC Berkeley.


Bobby Miller is a librarian and amateur photographer. He has work forthcoming in Atticus Review. His website is bobbymillerphoto.com. With his wife, Sandie Friedman, he publishes a project combining photography and flash fiction: sandiebobby.com.