Julie Cameron Gray is originally from Sudbury, Ontario. She has previously published two full length collections of poetry – Tangle (Tightrope Books 2013) and Lady Crawford (Palimpsest Press, 2016) which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award and recommended by Lena Dunham on lennyletter.com. Her work has also appeared in various literary journals such as The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Carousel, Grain, and anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English. She currently lives in Toronto.
Dorothy and the First Tornado
The sky was greening, foaming
like the top of a bubbling pot. And look,
there—see how the clouds climb down
to dance with us? How the animals
rush up to meet them, to conduct
the thrashing white sounds? But the clouds
want to circle on their own, thick rounds
across the fields far away, growing near.
Shingles, rakes, shovels through the air—so many things
learning to fly, or could they do this all along?
Come down from the sky, you silly cows.
Come back to the barn, blown open.
From Lady Crawford, Copyright Julie Cameron Gray, 2016.