john dorroh

Atomic Cloud

Sorcerer’s special of the day,
of every day -- cloudbank -- Heisenberg’s Uncertainty
Principle, determines whereabouts of

: flamboyant swans, hissing & spitting, their territory
claimed by radioactive tags.

: flashlights in glove boxes, useless without batteries,
which, by the way, are always dead when needed.

: kangaroo pouches, rubbed smooth as silk by joey
friction.

: tarnished forks, their silver coatings ugly streaks
of ancient bone marrow.

: the seeds of storms whirling like fan blades
spinning violently around fuzzy cores.

: red blood cells streaming like magic rivers
through marathon legs, flattened stomachs,
canyonated bridges from fresh flesh to rot.

Atoms will tell you that they don’t care.
They don’t aspire,
or deviate from steadfast spin,
housing nuclei from the last Ice Age
and all ages before that
from when it all began
with a bang, a whop on the head,
precedence over the Universe of Zero.

John Dorroh has never fallen into an active volcano, nor has he caught a hummingbird. However, he did manage to bake bread with Austrian monks and drink a healthy portion of their beer. Five of his poems were nominated for Best of the Net. Others have appeared in over 100 journals, including Feral, North of Oxford, River Heron, Wisconsin Review, Kissing Dynamite, and El Portal. He had two chapbooks published in 2022.