RIGOR CELSIUS
in Central New York
I’m allotted winter, allowed
Nothing that wasn’t before. Still, I am
Hovering a hand, tender to banks
of precipitate. May
Our next day be beset by
Nocturnal mountains and stinging stars. Like this
Opinion, snowdrifts? This danger-of-us eclipsing
Rheumy streets and practical plows? Let’s
Aid only the air: Mock heat
of liquid
Nitrogen. A helium head flares up
Down in a New York valley. Lift
Praise, shovels and skiers,
Rueful noses and itchy-pant aches. After
All (this temperate, tolerable year), the ice
Is so insistent—
insensate, specific; flaying tongues that slip
Smart answers to cells
of the metal
Element: its shrill decree
that decades and octaves
drop forever
gallons below.
INTAGLIO
winter, in front of the TV
Oh, gray-hair:
Arm of speckled boredom,
Sit awhile
And pull your throat
A cask of some
-thing Peculiar.
The villagers are coming.
Let’s smile
With straws
And other
Cupboard staples.
Thief. Shoeless wonder.
The drop-cloth
Of the window
Strains the yellow
Light.
Oh, poked moon.
You like a flayed field,
Hinged-hipped in the house
Strays built for stones
To live in.
Susan Comninos’s poetry has most recently appeared in the Harvard Review Online, Malahat Review, Southern Humanities Review and Hobart.
Photo by Flickr Creative Commons user spatz_2011
