The Path
Fragments of refrigerator, sheet
rock, canceled checks. Mattress
sizzling like a lit box
of sparklers over hot
power line. Eight confirmed
on Peach Valley Road.
Dot & Jimmy
in the storm shelter
curled together
like a braided wick. Blood
dripping like chocolate down Joy
Sipley’s neck. Six horses loose on Gum
Springs Road. Flattened
pickups on the highway tossed
like discarded juice boxes. With ballpoint
I scrawl frantically
in my skinny reporter’s
notebook. F-4
170 mph. Still no first
responders. A mini-van
gnarled in a birch. Sanctuary
at First Presbyterian vanishes
to rubble, children’s wing
left standing. Down
Bledsoe Creek the torso
of a broken doll slides away.
13 thoughts on "The Path"
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Dang this is intense! All those vivid details and metaphors like the juice boxes. I also like the title, whose meaning landed on me with a thud about halfway through. Bravo.
Putting my days in covering spot news to use.
killer final image
Love this, a poem of witness.
Those details — heartbreaking but you can’t look away.
Wonderful! I love “braided wick” … and the line breaks are really well done. I could almost see it without the stanza breaks too (although the “Blood // dripping” is really effective)… I love the thinness of the column of text because it makes me think of the notes being taken on a journalist’s tiny pad. It’s great. Well done!
love the relentless flow and eagerness of the piece, like taking dictation from something finished in your head
I would love to find a newspaper story like this…just once.
I once saw a picture taken after a tornado had peeled all of the outside structure of a bedroom and a deck – furniture in some places standing, fragments in others… You could tell what the room was, you could tell that it had seen something terrible. This poem feels like that to me.
Been in a couple of F4’s. You write the aftermath well. The vivid little details speak volumes.
Especially:
a broken doll slides away.
Wow, Linda! This poem is powerful.
The concluding line about the broken doll captures the chaotic destruction represented in the rest of your poem. So haunting and so well done!
Your observations here are quick and stinging. My jaw opens at the last part. Well done writing.