Bellystorm

Hammer of Gall

By Kathleen Kimball-Baker

No early detection.

No emergency prep.

Thunder is billowing

north of her equator

and walled air ripples,

full of charge; she closes her

eyes, counts one Mississippi

two Mississippi three

Mississippi FOUR

A sopping mattress leans,

no way out, only through.

Bayous are swollen, they'll spill

She must shelter in place in the

roaring darkness . . . she fastens

her arms around what's anchored

to the floor, cold and white
and she lowers her head,
a bow to the surge

Splinters of hurt cross the

dome of her belly and

everyone and everything

is running around the wet

hair, back of neck, temples,

the place above lips

all sticky with salt water

and her wipers can’t lift

against the deluge. She

thinks this: O God

the flash flood is going

to drown me I just know it

But someone is lifting her

head just above the tide,

an angel, surely an angel

till her throat is raw

till hurt crawls out of the wreckage

like refugees. In this shelter

of tile and slippery porcelain

and hurricane hand dryers,

she slumps, awaiting rescue,
and it comes, and so do
the cuts

The storm has a name that sounds
like a southern belle: biliary dyskinesia

you know, like Frankly Scarlet

Image by psoup