Downstairs, a frieze of naked women

wearing wide black sombreros

waited to be lit on the bar lamp.

I wanted to free them,

to break the glass on the framed

photograph next to them—

a white woman kissing a black man.

It looked like she was eating him.

I couldn’t swallow for days.

Mother placed it near the lamp

to decorate the house with peril,

drove us into the basement

with seven dogs, all strays,

surrounding us—the first sound

of heavy rain,

while upstairs father counted

money and wanted to be left alone.

Enough for groceries is all he cared.

Sometimes a day or two later,

we’d learn a tornado did pass

small as a bottle

unevenly parting the tips of fields.

Why did she insist

on plugging her ears,

sending father outside

to untie our horse,

lead him into the stall?

She’d wait for something

like a gunshot,

thunder,

or lightning,

no breaths in between,

then lead us out,

saved, a family—

wait for him to come back

from new damp grass.

How did we sleep through the rest—

the almost always

ravaged home,

father’s bar in the basement open,

flies in the fake ice cubes

looking so poor?

Dzvinia Orlowsky (MA)  is the author of several books of poetry, including Except For One Obscene Brushstroke (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2003). Her poetry has appeared in AGNI, Ploughshares, Salt Hill, Slope, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of Four Way Books.