PROSE POETRY

ONNA SOLOMON

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THUNDERHEAD

​​I watch the trees bow to it I stand at the edge of the covered porch listen to its din take over pour over rooftops flooding the gutters I breathe the wet drama of it but before the rain even stops my view fastens into blue and I step out my bare feet sinking into the sopping grass to see it blooming swiftly south as the late sun illuminates its billows it looks like the unfurling fist of a peony or a dancing phalanx of bodies I don’t know what it looks like alone watching it morph wishing for another witness a neighbor shouts from across the street Any rainbows? and I say No, but you have to see this and she crosses over to my yard up on the hill the cloud performing above the close-set houses and more neighbors emerge all of us lifting our faces as the roiling edges turn purple and orange until the thing disappears over the rooftops and everyone says Thank you thank you

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Onna Solomon is the author of the chapbook Disorder. Her poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Denver Quarterly, Hobart, and 32 Poems, among others. She lives in Ann Arbor, MI. Find her at onna-solomon.com.