"Nevermore" by Meggie Royer
Prairie Ledger
Downburst
He’s thumbing
the flint wheel,
hot as a wind
turbine as it fast
tracks down
the lighter’s grip
hold. His finger’s
over the carb
we gauge into
the bruised
Gala we scrape
and mine until
what’s saved
for this gust front
bathes the long-gone
core with smolder.
I watch him lip
the wet entropic
flesh—peel flaring
at the locus
of ignition, his lungs
wind shearing
smoke that haloes
his hair. I wait
for dusk to graffiti
the window’s
sun-split laths,
for when he’s ashing
into the chartreuse
gorge of his Stella
Artois, soot veiling
the blonde froth.
Squall Lines
My body’s swathed
over the washing
machine, its tinted
steel hewed
and tarnished.
Rinse cycle
and this one’s
taking pictures,
both of us rain-
blitzed, my skirt
tangled in his palms,
panties crushed
around one ankle.
The machine
plunges
through another
grinding cycle,
pressure flooding
the poloidal axis,
and it’s gravity
lashing our bodies,
not the water.
Graupel
I-29, the crash
nearly lethal.
I can’t recall
his name now,
just that he clenched
my throat when
ice ended us,
his thumbs dovetailing
my larynx.
That’s all I was
to him—to anyone--
swan tracing
the radius
of his body’s tempest.
Swan garroted
by winter’s slipknot.
Polar Vortex
In the Jacuzzi
suite, I strip
until I’m wilting
injured scallops,
jets thrusting
a shattered
turgor pressure,
the No Vacancy
neon tattooing
my back.
He turns to gust.
I weave our surges
between thumb
and forefinger,
urge the plume
ribbed and slick
into one more
vortex as it loiters
beside us, ghosting
the water.
Sara Henning is the author of A Sweeter Water (Lavender Ink, 2013), as well as two chapbooks, Garden Effigies (Dancing Girl Press, 2015) and To Speak of Dahlias (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Crazyhorse, Quarterly West, Green Mountains Review, Crab Orchard Review, and RHINO. Winner of the 2015 Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, she is currently a doctoral student in English and Creative Writing at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Assistant Managing Editor for the South Dakota Review and as associate editor at Sundress Publications.
Meggie Royer is a writer and photographer living in Minnesota who is currently majoring in Psychology at Macalester College. Her poems have previously appeared in Words Dance Magazine, Winter Tangerine Review, Electric Cereal, and more. In March 2013 she won a National Gold Medal for her poetry collection and a National Silver Medal for her writing portfolio in the 2013 National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her work can be found at writingsforwinter.tumblr.com.
