by Dale Going

Disinclined to dredge up the old efflorescence, my heart, a relatively lucky bauble, operated this trenchant December independent of drenched weather less photogenic than snow. Awakened in whether nor’wester by the Bay’s first-ever tornado warning, we wafted through the cellarless house like Balanchine’s La Sonnambula searching for safe ground: pirouetting remnants of rain-soaked forest’s frilled lichen unfurling tutu fringe. Summer memory recalled in winter wet: my childhood safe home beneath bridal wreath spirea, imagining that’s what it must smell like––vaguely fragrant, slightly acrid, acrimonious matrimony. Disinclined to repeat the pattern, asking after the fact knowing the answer, is it possible it is possible to survive tornado or marriage in a windowless dark.

Dale Going‘s poetry collection, “The Beautiful Language of Our Disaster,” is forthcoming in June as the Codhill Press Guest Editor Award selection. A chapbook, “For the Anniversaries of All Loving Kinds of Meetings,” is forthcoming in April from Albion Books. Her previous collections are “The View They Arrange” (Kelsey St. Press) and “As/of the Whole” (SFSU Award, selected by Brenda Hillman). Her work has been supported by Fund for Poetry, California Arts Council, and Residency Fellowships at Yaddo, Watermill Center, Wedding Cake House, and Djerassi. Recent poems appear in Annulet, Interim, New American Writing, Posit, VOLT, and elsewhere. https://linktr.ee/dalegoing