questions for my brother the tornado Matthew Thomas Bernell

issue 4

// poetry

Questions for My Brother, the Tornado
by Matthew Thomas Bernell

Will you show me the bruise guilt’s grip
left when you whipped roofs? Splintered homes?

Dragged the drive-in movie theater
to dust? How often do you dream

of disappearance afterwards? As if crawling
into the calm of a cornfield

glazed with rain? Was your first love
feeling? Or fleeing? Being forced earthward

out of a mesocyclone? The patriarchal
boom of a supercellular yell? Who

taught you to spiral? That the spectrum
between pain and pleasure could be

twisted like two saplings 
wired together? And will the light

you have siphoned from this wreckage
ease the ache of your tortured vortex? How could you

circle back for more? How could you? What is it like 
when you begin to suck dirt into yourself? 

The taste of that new, dark blood?

about the author // Matthew Thomas Bernell

Matthew Thomas Bernell (he/him) is an emerging writer from somewhere near the banks of the Wabash River in Indiana. His work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Pithead Chapel, New Ohio Review, North American Review, and elsewhere. Currently, he’s pursuing an MFA in Warren Wilson’s Program for Writers. You can find him on Twitter @ImmanentFlux, where you will quickly learn that he is a big fan of the slam dunk.

Instagram: @matthewthomasbernell
Twitter/X: @ImmanentFlux