Poetry: “Strange weather we’re having these last days,” by Jane Wiseman

Startled awake, I left my frayed brain
resting in its head-case as I floated away
up to the ceiling, out of the long window
into the northern hardy redbud just outside
beginning its flower, tight pink nodules
studding the branches, while beyond it, a cloud
puffed up, harried off as the front came through,
high dark wall towering, leading edge of it
a yellow strip against the curtain of rain
hanging tatters from it, and I wished never
to shove back into the tight cabinet of skull but
sweep west with the storm’s scud over the continent.

Jane Wiseman is a poet who splits her time between the rural Sandia Mountains of New Mexico and very urban south Minneapolis. Her chapbook The Bee Telephone won the Jonathan Holden Poetry Chapbook Contest for 2024. Her poetry has appeared in Southern Poetry Review, The Main Street Rag, S.W.I.M.M. Everyday, and NonBinary Review, among other journals.