All at once

By Althea Downing-Sherer

After Adrienne Rich

I

Chest burning Ascension from the riverbed   

The rain 

all at once Water makes curtains over the hips of scaffolding  

shielded by translucent sheets hinting at modesty

The rain all at once the biblical comparison

the voice saying that’s what I’ve been waiting for 

the sky to look like

II

They would test the tornado sirens mid-week   

until reality exceeded anticipation Tree limbs 

collapsed all at once

Nature was more than a construct:

dodging live wires

waking to yellow skies striking the match

the gas stove fumes hip bones under an iPhone flashlight

III

Facing the cinderblocks coughing up

ringtones and creaking spines contorted 

toward opening

skies ejecting rain in bursts like pixelation like the radio static of

the voice saying I’ve been waiting     

This is not somewhere else but here   

IV

All at once the digital distance 

It opens like torrents filling the sewers The memory

of shattered glass of heavy water of light flooding 

the surge of thunderheads of artificial softness eroding to bone

like circular prayer into sediment like the universe expanding