Martha Stewart Claims She Has Been Struck By Lightning Three Times by Rachel Bunting

Martha Stewart Claims She Has Been Struck
By Lightning Three Times

Some people attract electrical things.
Martha Stewart

The first time I was in the kitchen washing
dishes when it sizzled into my stomach
with a single silver stroke. The lightning
flower still blooms faintly from my navel.

The next time it hit, I was watching the storm
gaining strength as it rolled in, centering
itself over my home. I was on the telephone;
my teeth played like the keys of a xylophone.

Finally, adjusting chairs in the garden, the spring
day giving way to an evening shower, I was racing
against the thunder. This time the electric fire
blazed through my feet to the ground.

Now my body burns hotter than the sun, a question
of impossible physics: how can this skin remain
intact, containing molten tissue without a rapid
evaporation of its organs, its muscles? Everything

 

has changed now, my hands no longer my most

trusted tools: muffin batter bakes within my glowing

palms on the way to the oven; leaf wreathes explode

into flames, scorching the lace runner on my dining table.

 

My body burns through my clothes, smoke escaping

from every loose-stitched seam.

Comments

[elizabeth]

I've been working on a poem for months about being struck by lighting (other people, not me). This is fantastic!