Dave Bonta's "Altercation" is only a few lines long, but it packs in two scenes at once. The first is human: someone is out of work, and "they break up." The poem doesn't say whether the job loss caused the split, but the way the lines sit together suggests the money trouble and the breakup are tangled. The second scene is the wind at night, which the poem describes in terms of "vehemence and rhetoric," words you'd normally use for an argument.
That's the clever turn. The title promises a fight, and the poem delivers it through the weather. The wind becomes the loud, angry voice we never actually hear from the couple. Or perhaps it's how the speaker remembers the argument: a lot of noise, fierce and persuasive-sounding, but ultimately just air blowing around in the dark.
The speaker keeps a cool distance and never says how they feel. The mood is bleak, restless, and a little weary, like lying awake after a row has ended.