Our doors blocked by a blizzard
the two of us climbed from a window
into a world made new—

mailboxes buried, signs disappeared.
We walked on the tops of bushes,
dug until we found our car.

And dug some more.
We cleared the hood,
unburdened the windshield,

tunneled all the way to the tires.
Then what?
The roads were closed,

there was nowhere to go.
Sweating inside our layers,
we let ourselves fall

back into drift.
We had no ambition.
For minutes, or a year,

it was enough to lie there,
stunned with sun, with implacable white.
Our eyes glazed.

The frost of our breath happened.
And then we stood, clapping
our jackets free of snow,

suddenly shy
to see the imprint of wings,
so slight, it’s a wonder

we trusted ourselves at all.

___________________________________________________

Wendy Mnookin is a poet living in Newton, Massachusetts. She received her BA from Radcliffe College and her MFA in Writing from Vermont College. Her latest book, THE MOON MAKES ITS OWN PLEA was published by BOA Editions in 2008. Her other collections are WHAT HE TOOK, TO GET HERE, and GUENEVER SPEAKS. She teaches poetry at Emerson College.

More Moonshine, Please!

Fly us to the moon, or out past the fog. But please, oh wow please let’s bypass any Sotomayor updates this fine Wednesday morning. Hey, we know it’s important, and we are interested. It’s just that, as our cranky colleague pointed out earlier, everybody and their mother is live blogging the Sotomayor hearings. So yes sir today we’ll make like a tree and stick to what we know. Or wish we knew: Good old double talk and book speak. Bear with us. OK, The Elegant Variation knows how to have a civilized conversation. Recently they had one with Joseph O’Neill. Keats and Byron receive a bit of 21st century love. That old dog…the bane of our civilization…MFA writing programs…are brought down by force in Critical Flame. Then we read what novelists who write about the fog in San Francisco have to say about the fog in San Francisco. Lastly, for today’s warm and fuzzy feeling, let’s see what H-Net has to say about fascism. Dominus Opus, and good day. — Kevin Murphy

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