"Headphone Forecast" by Sage Ravenwood

Headphone Forecast

My face wasn’t wet from rain
The storm came through headphones
I had forgotten that sound Rainfall pelting
against windows and porch rails
A car’s slow roll through a car wash
Hundreds of small cloth strips
attached to vertical cylinders
Slapping vehicles like kids kicking tin cans
A whistled whoosh sucking air
pulling water from steel bodies
The wind raking dead branches from trees
Cushioned speakers crackling thunder
Momentarily startled reaching up as if
my ears were scorched and I can smell
a calf’s burnt fur burning my nostrils
There are cows gathered under the trees
My silence lightning before the roar
The rain never stops

Sage Ravenwood

Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi, and her one-eyed cat, Max. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in The Temz Review, Contrary, Pioneertown Literary Journal, Grain, The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry (Sundress Press), The Rumpus, Lit Quarterly, PØST, Massachusetts Review, Savant-Garde, ANMLY (Anomaly), River Mouth Review, Native Skin Lit, Santa Clara Review, The Normal School, UCity Review, Punk Noir, Janus Literary, Jelly Bucket, Colorado Review, Pangyrus, PRISM International, 128 Lit, A Gathering of the Tribes, Ponder Review, and more. Her book, Everything That Hurt Us Becomes a Ghost is forthcoming from Gallaudet University Press, Fall 2023.

Headshot: Sage Ravenwood

Photo Credit: Staff

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