Krista Marie DeBehnke is a professor, poet, and playwright from Wisconsin. She earned her BA in English at UW-Milwaukee, her MFA in poetry at Eastern Washington University, and her PhD in English at the University of Louisiana at a Lafayette. Her work has been published in Saranac Review, Portland Review, Rock & Sling, and Masque & Spectacle, among other places. She enjoys collecting vinyl with her partner, Drew, writing about weather and the occult, and long walks in the park with her two yellow Labradors, Echo and Roxy.
I Break Hearts like a Tornado
You arrived aerial,
a heap of a white Ford barreling into view,
a cumulonimbus darkening,
a bottle of whiskey, a few cans of beer
and my low-pressure goodbye.
Somewhere between driveway
and clouds at 110 miles per hour broke every window
you held open and raged
for seventeen miles of contempt.
I hope you find something useful
in the wreckage. In time, I’ll be that small glitch
in the perfect summer sky, that little terror
you thought would kill you.