BY ALYSE KNORR

Sheet Lightning

At three in the morning it awakens me—
no thunder or rain sounds, only the pure flashes
themselves, flicking on and off like a light switch
in the sky. On and off across the highway
and over the cornfields, ripping and strobing
the air like nothing I’ve ever seen. I pull up
the blinds to watch closer, eager audience
to this silent opera of the prairie night.
I’ve seen Georgia rain, Alaska rain, big city
rain and snow. But never this rainless rain
in the center of the country—this storm
that never started, raging on all night.

My Brother Bowfishing in Lake Lanier

He describes the blood-sloshed boat, the boy on the roof with arrow drawn
and aimed at the spawning gars. To say it happens quickly is to miss

that halted moment just before the buzzing string, the whoops and cheers,
the frantic death. I picture this boy handing the camo bow to my brother,

gesturing with a grunt how to hold it, how to wait. The gars they hunt
swim to the boat’s light to stalk smaller fish. Years later, his college team’s

first tradition: list the names of any sisters. David under stars and moon
draws back, sights the silver flicker, lets go. Hand over hand he hauls up

the catch, diamond-armored and alive, skewered. The gar thrashes.
The boys laugh, snap off the needle beak, and toss him back. David watches.

Or he misses, and the fiberglass arrow returns to the boat dripping, barbed,
and empty. He misses and the night goes on, heavy with night itself.

Alyse Knorr is an assistant professor of English at Regis University and co-editor of Switchback Books. She is the author of three poetry collections, three poetry chapbooks, and a non-fiction book. Her work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, The Greensboro Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others.