Tag: snow

Four Poems by Meg Pokrass

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Purplish Bluebells

When I forgive the man who offers
me happy nothingness and then takes it away again,

he smiles through his computer,
teeth like uncultured pearls.

I imagine stepping over the broken bridge
of his faded handsomeness, delivering a bouquet

of cash-and-carry roses.
Thanks for not being here, I say,

touching my cloudy hair,
contemplating an evening of almost promises.

No problemo, he says,
then zips me a video of the beautiful sunrise in Dorset.

It’s Spring, birds are chirping like crazy.
I imagine purplish bluebells

hanging their heads, unable
to open their faces.

*

Arrival

(after W.S. Merwin)

We have come with our slender ages,
our knowledge such as it is,

our hopes, such as they are.
We have come after rushing around

our mother’s house, smudging eyeliner.
We have come with terrible

shoes for the weather. We have come
after checking the mirrors compulsively,

putting on our outdoor faces,
deciding which extravagant hats to wear.

We have come with a doggish smell
after hugging the Labrador too many times.

We have come after warming ourselves
up by practicing in the mirror, after

slouching around on our mother’s empty
loveseat, thinking this is not a life.

We have come to knock ourselves
off the wall backwards like Humpty Dumpty

hiding the cracks in our smiles.

*

Irish Spring

A girl like her will rise early
then later, go back to sleep
with a snug feeling

in her belly. A girl like her,
having recently learned
that she can give herself pleasure

before the sun comes up,
will luxuriate in the wilderness
of her sheets. A girl like her,

hiding a found paperback copy
of The Happy Hooker underneath
her bed with the resident

dust bunnies. A girl like her
meeting up with a neighbour girl
so wild, it makes her feel tall.

A girl like her becoming friends
with the girl, believing herself
to have achieved cool. A girl

like her in the neighbour’s
shower, smashed against glass
by the girl’s brother, staring

at dead mosquitos on a bar
of Irish Spring soap.

*

Snow

Your house deflated so quickly.
There were only three of you now.
You, the dog, and your sad-haired mom
who distrusted dating, yet had no trouble
coaxing approval in the meat section,
affirmation in the flavoured canned fruit aisle,
eye contact near the honey.

You stalked her dark kitchen, burnt toast
but you buttered it anyway, moved
it into your mouth, sucked it til it softened.
Played with the dog by chasing him
around the living room, teaching him
how to chase you back.

When he peed on the floor, you hugged him.
I’m sorry, you said. Mopped up the mess
with an old t-shirt, crammed it into
the Hover twin tub washer that vomited
soap granules. Wore white flecked clothing
as if you were spit on by snow.

*

Meg Pokrass is the author of First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories (Dzanc Books, 2024) and eight previous collections of prose and prose poetry. Her work has been published in RATTLE, DoDo Erasure, Plume, Waxwing, Hunger Mountain, New England Review and Electric Literature. Meg is the Founding Editor of the Best Microfiction anthology series.

SNOW by J.R. Solonche

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SNOW

The snow started when one flake
landed on my sleeve and stayed
there like a piece of light that had
forgotten how to be infinite. Snow
falls and falls. It doesn’t care about
the property lines. It doesn’t care
about the fact that I haven’t
finished the chores I promised
the autumn I would do. Snow falls
and falls. Soon will the woods
become a white room. Snow falls
and falls and falls, and the earth
yields itself up into the sky’s hands.

*

Nominated for the National Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize, J.R. Solonche is the author of more than 40 books of poetry and coauthor of another. He lives in the Hudson Valley.

After the Radiators Turn On by Elena Rotzokou

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After the Radiators Turn On

In the early dark the city is a lung
learning its own weather again—
steam lifting from manholes,
a soft animal breath that fogs the streetlights
into halos you could almost touch.

I walk past the bodegas’ bright fruit,
their oranges stacked like small suns
held in place by netting,
and the florist’s buckets—
tulips sealed in clear sleeves
like letters that won’t open until morning.

Somewhere above me a radiator coughs
and begins its long persuasion,
metal warming to a low hymn.
The pipes talk in ticks and knocks,
a code for staying.

On the corner a man salts the sidewalk
as if he’s blessing it,
white grit scattering like crushed shells.
The salt remembers oceans
even here, even now,
even between brick and subway grates.

At the bus stop, strangers become a little family
without ever looking up:
the shared choreography of shifting weight,
the way we hold our phones like talismans,
the small courtesy of making room
for each other’s coats and breath.

I think about how winter edits everything—
strips the trees down to their sentences,
makes every branch a question
asked in black against the sky.
And still the sparrows persist,
pinpricks of life
stitching noise into the cold.

Later, indoors, I peel off my scarf
and the room smells faintly of wool and heat.
On the windowsill, a glass of water
has gone quiet and perfectly clear,
holding the last light
as if it’s something borrowed.

Then the building settles—
one deep click in the walls—
and the water in the glass shivers,
a thin ring traveling outward
as if a fingertip touched it.

Outside, a siren unspools and thins,
somewhere a door slams,
somewhere a train passes underfoot
and the window gives back a faint tremor.
The light breaks in the water, recomposes—
not mercy, not lesson—
just proof that even stillness
has a pulse.

*

Elena Rotzokou is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York and a PhD student in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her research focuses on Romanticism, ecocriticism, and the ways poetic form registers environmental change.

Spring Snow by Sally Nacker

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Spring Snow

Snow dusts the wood.
Peace resides in April snow.
Birdhouse roofs hold
tufts of snow, and bluebell
buds bow. Stilled,
stilled, the new
beginning of the world.

*

Sally Nacker lives in a small house in the woods of Redding, CT with her husband and two cats. Wild birds are her joy. Recent publishing credits include Canary, ONE ART, Third Wednesday, and The Sunlight Press. Kindness in Winter is her newest collection.

On the White Hill by Sally Nacker

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On the White Hill

On the white hill—moonlight
bright on the hemlocks
drooping with snow, bright
on the hill where deer tracks go.

The trees toss their snow
in the wind on the hill,
and the prints vanish now—
one by one, they go.

*

Sally Nacker lives in a small house in the woods of Redding, CT with her husband and two cats. Wild birds are her joy. Recent publishing credits include Canary, ONE ART, Third Wednesday, and The Sunlight Press. Kindness in Winter is her newest collection.

Under the Snow — Under the Sun by Özge Lena

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Özge Lena is an Istanbul based writer/poet and English language teacher who has a published novella titled Otopsi (The Autopsy). Also, her short stories appeared in some of the literary magazines in Turkey and her poems in All Female Menu, Seiren Quarterly, and Daily Drunk Mag.

Twitter: @LenaOzge
Instagram: @lenaozge