By Emma DePanise

Maybe it’s easier to imagine the ground

beneath us breaking than the air

we breathe. Over lakes and oceans, sounds

and deserts, these booms here

for centuries. Perhaps sand sliding down

dunes. Perhaps the atmosphere, as it amplifies distant

thunder—strong enough to break windows, not a cloud

in sight. Perhaps underwater caves. Perhaps a meteor, spent

from the sky by the time its sound rocks

us like a memory. Perhaps a solar storm, as if the sound were

the sun’s language. No blasts, no shock

waves, the sun still speaks to us daily. How my mother

says she loves the smell of her own skin in sunlight,

like peanut butter, she says, toasted and bright.

*

How a plane stretches a low note

across the sky, growls against blue.

As a child, I associated this sound

with nature—with sun on skin, leaf-shards

in my hair, black-eyed Susans rubbing the brick

patio. Oh, my sister loved to spot the moon

in daylight. We poured water in a glass jar praying

for fins. The spider silk ready to swaddle

us, of course. The whole backyard

quaking in our vision, limbs and shoots always

titling toward new.

*

Tie your fingers to air-tendrils. Brace

your breath. Dear Each Eyelash, sealing

yourself is only natural. Wet your lips. There is

a song in the blast before it takes

your breath, dear. Each eyelash sealing

to the vibrations. The ocean shivering

a song in the blast. Before it takes

too many bones or windows, the sound sighs

to the vibrations, the ocean. Shivering

in the sky and fallen trees, you count

too many. Bones or windows? The sound sighs,

all cracked when the sidewalks caved

in. The sky and fallen trees you count

in pieces. The atmosphere is

all cracked. When the sidewalks caved,

you heard the sky speak and asked it to listen.

Emma DePanise’s poems have appeared recently in journals such as The Los Angeles Review, The National Poetry Review, The Minnesota Review, Passages North and elsewhere. Currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Purdue University, she is a poetry editor for Sycamore Review and a co-editor of The Shore.