Kelle Groom
Kelle Groom is the author of four poetry collections, Underwater City (University Press of Florida), Luckily, Five Kingdoms, and Spill (Anhinga Press); a memoir, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (Simon & Schuster), a Barnes & Noble Discover selection and New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice; and most recently, How to Live: A Memoir in Essays (Tupelo Press). An NEA Fellow, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow, and recipient of two Florida Book Awards in poetry, Groom’s work has appeared in AGNI, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker, New York Times, Ploughshares, and Poetry.
LIGHTNING STRIKE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD
Lightning strikes every afternoon in June
a hundred degrees
penny hail, tornado warnings
Smoke covered the Dixie Freeway
the field behind my office
struck, on fire for days,
hot spots keep popping up
fire line 35 feet from buildings,
ten feet deep down into the earth,
vegetation fuel cleared
The field a meadow a forest a swamp
preserved land, lightning
can hit the muck, go underground stay
for years burning
you’d never know until one day, POOF,
you’re on fire.
At the jetty, a fisherman’s lead
was hit by lightning
which travelled down
the metal rod, into the fisherman’s temple,
down his face, torso, heading for his feet
which would have been
blown off which would have been the end
of him, but the fisherman
was wearing waders, and the charge reversed,
back up through his body
down his arm to his fingers looking for a way
out and blew two fingers off.
Firemen can make water wetter: add Dawn
dish detergent, more slippery
too, in case there’s a fire that’s hard to reach.
Now, when the trash
can blows away in the lightning
storm, I let it go,
let trash spill, attract alligators, I’ve seen
the map it can leave
on the side of a face,
burn became day descended
from fever, my town
was the Lightning Strike Capital of the World,
now it’s Four Corners
west of Disney. Florida had 18,706,904
lightning strikes last year.
It’s surprising
the whole state isn’t on fire,
all of us electrocuted.
There is no safe place
outdoors, said Chris Vagasky,
lightning expert.
We’re bright, frazzled,
tamping the ground
in our rubber shoes,
avoiding trees, headed for our cars,
our houses, staying away
from windows, shook
from the acoustic shock.
