Abecedarian for a Hometown Tornado

by Andrew Alexander Mobbs 
 
 Cabot, Arkansas, March 29, 1976, 3:18 PM 
 A ntagonized by charcoal skies, townsfolk 
bowed their heads in prayer, beelined for Polaroid 
cameras to document southern springtime 
destruction bleeding out in the electric air. 
Elementary schoolkids curled under wooden desks, 
fearful of the sky tearing its seams, sirens 
going off at the drop of a drugstore dime, 
hallways left hollow in metallic hiss and creak. 
I imagine my parents, twenty-something and 
just out of college, exchange a fleeting 
kiss goodbye before dad got in his gold Nova, 
lead foot gunning for his folks’ during 
midday darkness, drifting in brick-splitting wind. 
Not much back then but your family farms, 
open land to gobble and shred, those five 
poor souls laid flat beneath white sheets in the 
quiet aftermath of pine sap sizzling. 
Remember, just weeks before, several 
science teachers at the local schools had 
taught lessons on twisters—how spiraling 
updrafts and downdrafts can waltz inside 
violent velocities of daggered rain. How 
when the storm cellars finally open up to a 
xanthic haze of debris, each living throat 
yells out their drawled grief, a soft 
zephyr spreads the scent of honeysuckle. 
 
 
 Arkansas Review 54.1 (April 2023) 
 59