STORM WARNING

She told me: pain needs a witness
knowing, once or twice, the fruit of me
has been peeled.

Under this dress: eggs and arms.
A one-eyed doll:  births
and breaks.

I live under shell cracked sky
sleep with undecided bones.

Female: a storm I first noticed
in the clouds.
It has taken all
of me

to rain
this hard.

_________________________________________

Kelly Grace Thomas is the winner of the 2017 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor from Rattle and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Kelly was also a 2016 Fellow for the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Nashville Review, The Boiler, Sixth Finch, Muzzle, Rattle, PANK and more. Kelly’s chapbook, Zersetzung, was a finalist for the 2017 Lorien Prize from Thoughtcrime Press. Kelly works to bring poetry to underserved youth as the Manager of Education and Pedagogy for Get Lit-Words Ignite. She lives in Los Angeles and is working on her debut novel Only 10,001. For more of her work, visit www.kellygracethomas.com