By Kimberly Johnson

Featured Art: Lightning coming from the Sky by Johannes Plenio

I saw you coming from a mile away,
               Thunder. You play
       Coy, sly your pretty in winks

Around the cumulus, but up close what colors
               You show, all shazam
       And tantrum while the Wham-bam

On the wireless crackles with static. What the swagger
               Are you after?
       Whose the heart you do not stagger

When you rattle through the bracken, knocking
               Branches at the casement?
       I betook me to the basement

When you batted first your lashes, flashed
               Your distant
       Dazzle—I’ve been whiplashed

By your type before: you come on easy
               But want me on my knees,
       Want to flutter my transformers

And shut off all my lights. You throw a glam show
               And then you blow
       Along to the next hapless,

Leaving blank fuzz across the radio dial—
               No tune, no storm
       Warning, no Thank you ma’am.

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Kimberly Johnson’s most recent collection is Uncommon Prayer. She has work recent and forthcoming in The New Yorker and Best American Poetry 2020. Johnson is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, among others. She lives and teaches in Utah.