Size / / /

Don't let your baby cry
frothed in the milk of a tornado.
In this belt it happens all the time.

Shrieking in braided winds they
get dumped in the grocery store parking lot.

The plaza, which is being expanded,
includes a goodlife a credit union
and an adjacent smoothie bar.

Teeth the size of your hand
smile from advertisements pasted on plywood
barring public access to the wound.

Its mouth ratcheted open,
throat a hole in which to bury
tendrils of the new condo.
We must be desperate to
dig so deeply, seeking stability.

I toss my cigarette into the gutter with its brothers
while waiting for my bus, watching the apocalypse.

Tornado babies are born with a desire to live
greater than at any other point.

But I've seen one choke on the stick inside a pogo
because it was never taught to chew or swallow.

They do not know about many important things;
like razor blades or parking tickets
or buying groceries after work
while all day
your boy friend smoldered in bed
drinking the cheapest beer, streaming movies.

Coughing from exhaust fumes
I see one crawl behind the wet straw set up
by the grocery store to emote a rural fantasy.
Perhaps it thought it could build a nest.
Make a home among a cart of watermelons
a stand of cut flowers,
and the gangly remains of potted highbush blueberries
too root bound to see spring.




Cid V Brunet writes from her home in Southern Ontario. She writes poetry, short fiction, and the occasional folk song. She recently had her first poem published in Rhapsody: An Anthology of Guelph Writers (2014).
Current Issue
7 Jul 2025

i and màmá, two moons, two eclipsed suns.
Tell me, can God sing / like a katydid; cicada-bellow / for the seventeen silent years?
In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Dan Hartland speaks with reviewers and critics Rachel Cordasco and Will McMahon about science fiction in translation.
Thursday: Archipelago of the Sun by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani 
Friday: BUG by Giacomo Sartori, translated by Frederika Randall 
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Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
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Podcast read by: Jenna Hanchey
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Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
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