Super-sized Series

 Winter Wonderland Part 1

 

Photo by Joe Cottonwood

Two poems by Robbi Nester

Urban Fantasy

I used to stand out in the cold admiring the stars, 
chiseled out of ice, above newly-fallen snow. 
In this world, a blend of new and old, we’d make 
our pilgrimage downtown on the elevated train 
to stand before the windows of the great 
department stores of blessed memory as at 
the entranceway to some great temple, full 
of winter scenes of animatronic animals, 
hedgehogs and foxes, deer, a silver and white 
forest that glittered like the stars, the sort 
all city kids like me longed to play in, not 
the scruff of pines our mothers warned us 
not to wander, haunt of criminals and rapists. 
These were kindly stars, where we believed 
no harm would come to us, thought this security 
might be something we could buy, if we 
saved up enough. We imagined we’d live 
in manor houses out on the Main Line, 
far from the grubby rowhomes of Stirling Street, 
aspired to put ourselves beyond the touch 
of cruelty and death, sheltered as new grass 
and seeds beneath the snow, locked securely 
by the moon’s silver key, hanging from a snowy branch. 

Snow Day
Now that I live in Southern California, it snows only in my memories, 
where, seated on the overheated radiator, I’d watch the flakes 
sift down like spilled flour. The front yard would become a tundra, 
sparse grass bent beneath hillocks of purest white, hedges etched 
in ice. No school. But soon, the rasping of the snow shovels 
would start, that chorus of aluminum amphibians, and I’d lead
an expedition out to the untouched driveway, clad in clumsy boots 
and jacket, swaddled in a scarf that scratched my chin, 
eager to step into the swells between the laundry poles. 
I’d pull the dog or someone’s little brother on a sled 
to turn in a summer’s worth of soda bottles for a refund. 

Two poems by Rachael Ikins

Late March Snow at a Higher Elevation

Power outage.
Snow fills my eyes.
Stuffed, windless peace.
Batting wrapped tree limbs.
Barn’s basketball hoop
filled white to its rim.
Dunk-shot! I imagine the cheers.

Snow speaks with subliminal 
feline tongue. Grimaced
face, incisors bare.
I hear nothing.

Sky. Two red-tailed hawks float.
He touches her wingtip with his.
Falls through snow, falling, they fall
in lust, in love—spring brings even
the solitary out of the woods.
I hear nothing.

Snow blankets our numb house.
Steals electricity. I learn this only
when lamp stutters under its shade,
I turn the switch. I hold
my breath. Snow sifts silently higher.
I hold my breath.

From Slideshow in the Woods

Winter Chorus


The ice-toads crept out today.
They live under the blue curls of snowdrift
Sing a creaking, groaning song.

Their skin glass-white
and lavender,
cold crystal new-sky eyes.

Twenty below out and the voice 
of the forest opens.

Those strange creatures 
clatter and clack

and breed between the ice-stars
that tiptoe over the pond
like some giant stilted bird.

First prize NLAPW poetry contest, 
From Slideshow in the Woods

Wandering In a Green Winter Wonderland by Joan Leotta

Note: January is the best time to buy collards where we used to live, Calabash, NC.

Row upon row of
collard green plants,
rise up from the ground
leaves bunched tightly,
tips kissed with frost.
Chill means they are
 “ready for picking,”
taking home
washing
simmering in a pot
with a leftover
holiday ham bone.
After I savor the greens,
sop up the pot liquor
with fresh cornbread,
I wander out in the
remaining rows,
planning meals made
from these “miles” of greens,
thinking “winter wonderland indeed.”
                       
Verse Virtual Dec 2023

Woman and Man in Snow by Joanne Durham

after a Fred Stein photograph, “Embrace, Paris” 

In the dark street, slick and silenced by snow, 
a woman and a man embrace.
Beneath a streetlamp that haloes them 
above their shadows. No sign 
of a car, not even a stray cat stealing 
a sliver of midnight
from a shivering moon. 
Maybe they are hugging hello, maybe 
goodbye,
with coats so thick, fingers gloved, 
it must be impossible 
to feel each other’s heartbeat. 
No, more than possible. Maybe 
they’re young in love and relish 
the rest of the world’s loneliness.
Have you held that moment, at least 
once in your life,
when you could not have been 
any warmer−
even in a blizzard so blinding
it all turned out to be a mirage? 

First published in Dodging the Rain

Two poems by Lorraine Caputo

SNOW DREAMS

Last night
I dreamt on the edge
of sleep

Last night
I watched my dreams:
Snow fell in small balls
& snow accumulated thick

Many nights
I drift deep in my dreams
Their images elude me come
reluctant morning

& outside the sky still grey
although the day
is aging

Again I awoke
in the void of night
& a strange whiteness
outside the window
caught my eye
Then I knew
what had
awakened me:

Thick clusters of flakes
layering felting the world
Again this night
the silence of snow
awakens me

I step
into the crisp air
& watch
the hoarfrost fluff
beneath a misty moon


The [Canadian] Parliamentary Poet Laureate Poem of the Month 

TO BUILD A SNOWMAN

Two children from China
never seen snow before,
playing
throwing snowballs
making a snowman
I throw my clothes on,
grab a carrot and a hat for their snowman
(I couldn’t find a scarf)
and run outside to be a child again,
show them how to make a snowangel,
watch them build a man
of too-dry snow,
stick the carrot in its face,
run to the backyard to find stick arms,
climbing through knee-deep drifts,
try to think of where stone eyes could be 
under a foot of snow.
The older boy finds small twigs
and uses them for eyes,
carefully bending them
and setting them in the snow-face.
A Chinese snowman
for Chinese boys.

The Poet Magazine 


Uncle teaches how to drive on ice by Joe Cottonwood

Like falling in love, Uncle says, 
and laughs. Steer into the skid, 
not away. Feather touch on the wheel.
Bridge freezes first but—Sammy frowns—
one time approaching the Snake River span
hidden ice not playing nice
sent his old pickup skating
so he steered into the slide, pumped the brakes
and stopped plumb at the canyon’s edge.

Not far behind him 
an AmeriGas delivery truck.

Even in a blizzard you can foresee events,
headlights through a veil of swirling flakes 
so he bails from the old Ford face-first 
into a snowbank just before a 16 ton tank 
of liquified petroleum gas 
like a giant hockey puck 
plows through the pickup
down toward the Snake. 

The cab submerges. Bubbles.

Soft the silence, 
snow falling in sheets

and a woman appears 
clawing up the embankment
spitting curses
ejected halfway down
fractured arm but she can climb.

She’s a blue-black ponytail, 
a white parka, red blood dripping,
she’s an eagle with broken wing.

Says she’s gonna sue somebody’s ass 
sure as her name is Sacajawea Jones and then 
go home to Louisiana where it’s warm 
and purchase land down there. 

Aunt Sac. Why her crooked arm. 
Already on the black ice
Uncle Sammy’s in love.

from my forthcoming book “buck naked is the opposite of hate"

Three poems by Gary Grossman

American Sycamore

It is a ghostly obelisk,
breathless among the paused
leafless gray soldiers of the forest.
Post and water oaks, shagbark
and mockernut hickories, red and
chalkbark maples, and silverbells.
So many trees hold up the cobalt
southern sky.
White on white echoes through
the Georgia woods in January
and the visual music pulls my eyes
back to the solitary sycamore, trunk
shedding a few last puzzle pieces
of elderly taupe bark.
Forty-nine years ago I met the
companion who now walks beside
me on the trail—today we are
the wrinkled, white-barked, trees
of the town.

Trouvaille Review 

A Cardinal in January 
      
Like an ember,
feathered crimson 
with a blush 
from the sun's dark eyes,
               
he perches 
on a snow clad limb, 
contesting snowflecks, 

like a hearth-warm ember,
gently unfolding 
the bleached hands 
of winter,

he brings life 
to crystalline January,
like the red breath of embers,
or the shadowed flare 
of his murmuring flight.

Blood and Fire Review

Dancing in January 

This morning I was startled,
by the listless ice crystals,
splayed in sparkling embrace,                
on the windshield of my truck.

They had tangoed through the dawn.

1995, The Acorn 11

Final Frost

At seventy, it’s all odds, even planting veggies. 
Sage of the Georgia almanac says Last frost, 

fifteenth of April—plant prior, and clay-red hands spin 
the roulette wheel—odds slightly less than fifty-fifty

(green zero and double zero). Will sprouts have 
a funeral in crystalline shrouds, or early births of 

tomatoes, peppers, and beans. Seeds are a hold-em 
promise from Gaia—because life is both poker 

and blackjack—draw two and hit me again—they’re 
just plants though.

And my own final frost?


Chewers by Masticodores,