What Minnesotans Write About In December

White is Not the Absence of Color

This is not the season's
first snow - it is the second. Shoveling
narrow paths on city sidewalks; this is not
how we want to spend our early evenings,
but we do it anyways. This is not a perfect
snowfall, yesterday's polluted snow
salt-and-peppers today's fresh batch,
mingling to dingy gray. This is not
purity, not beauty, not truth
in somewhat silence, in scraping
of metal against black ice, frozen ground.
This is not our destiny, our winter weight
straining against this heavy burden.
This is not enough exercise
for our brittle bodies, not an excuse
to spend time outside in a turquoise
twilight. This is not our favorite chore,
not breaking angry icicles clinging to gutters
like grudges. This snow packed path
I made for us to day is not
an escape route, not an uphill battle,
twenty feet long and two feet wide,
eight inches of snow on each side. It is only
a ribbon-white shoveled path
unspooling ahead, pulling
us towards both ground and sky.

Feeding Habits of Foxes

Feeding Habits of Foxes

In my poems, I leave you
scavenging in decent people's garbage cans,
pacing behind a zookeepers glass, loping
across other people's lawns. Hungry,
I never let you feed.

Why do I leave you
at the end of lines, picking
at some family's thrown out food?

Another writer
leaves you scraps outside
her door, allows you to ask
why you're not being fed.
Not me.

I know this isn't right, know
you hunt alone. You sink
into tangles of sun dried brush, disguised
in your mottled red and white pelt,
invisible to your prey. Even now,

I can't bear to write
that you kill. In flashes of white
knife teeth, you kill to feed
your sleeping family,
to feed yourself.

I think I am afraid
of my own natural red hair,
point of my teeth, my silent
stalking ways. I never know

when I will leave home
hungry, ready to inflict
necessary wounds to feed
myself. No matter

which cage I put you in
I cannot escape
our common name, our common
wild instincts, afraid
as I am of the animal inside.


****

This poem is a rewrite of a poem from my thesis manuscript. It's about 2/3 of the way into the book. One of the first poems is this one, which is a ghazal. In ghazals, you have to name yourself or speak to yourself. Since my maiden name is Fox, I put foxes in my ghazals. I rewrote this one several times, and my advisor asked me why the fox at the end was always hungry. When I started thinking about it, an earlier version of "Feeding Habits..." came out.

I've rewritten this poem a zillion times, because it always feels un-done. I don't know if it is still unfinished, but here's version number one zillion and one.

Back When It Was 6 to 2, Not 9 to 5

The theme for this week's Totally Optional Prompts was work. When I was in graduate school, I worked 20-40 hours a week at a local Pier 1 Imports, until it closed and I got my teaching job.

One of my favorite/least favorite jobs was unloading the 6:00 stock truck on Wednesdays. In the summer, it was awesome. It was warm in the morning, I got to be outside, and the stock tended to be smaller discount items. In the winter, it could be awful. There was slushy gray black snow, freezing cold, heavy boxes of furniture (better sellers in winter) and the myriad boxes of Christmas ornaments that were always broken.

This morning, on my way to breakfast, I saw a freight truck pull into the alley where my store used to be, and the dawn was breaking blue and orange across the empty street and I wrote this.

Walking to Work, 5:42 AM

Streetlights dot the sidewalk,
pierce the dark sky like stars.

Salt, gravel and ice slide
me forward, unsteadily. I know

what is coming next:
eight feet, ten feet, twenty

of packed semi, buttressed
by sheets of plywood. I will hop

left-right-left-right, blowing
warm breath into my freezing

fingers, taste rubber work gloves
on my lips. I will not talk

too early, will not wear a back brace
over shirt, under coat, will not

breathe black exhaust fumes, will not
ask for help hoisting the oak armoire

on the lone two wheeler, while
guiding it safely inside. The only

conversation will be two unfunny
morning DJs cackling on the radio

and my internal counting of cardboard
boxes, minutes on my time sheet,

minutes until the sky burns blue
and I crawl tired, home.

Drugstore Perfume

Another wonderful prompt from Totally Optional Prompts -- click here to read the original, by Ted Kooser. I never really "got" him, thought he was pleasant enough, but this poem stuck in my head all week.

Drugstore Perfume

She stands in a yellowed bathroom, lathers
vanilla-scented moisturizer on freshly
shaved legs. Grits her teeth against
the sting of open nicks, watches red
bumps raise on white skin. In the smell
of vanilla mingled with the light
metallic tang of blood, she breathes in
1989, breathes in fluorescent pink clouds
of Love's Baby Soft and the white cotton
tampon threads, tangled in the black leather
recesses of her dirty purse. All
that's missing from this seventh grade
scenario are the blue gray clouds
of an eight grader's cigarette butt and
the burning desperation to be noticed
and not noticed, all at once. Wait,
that's still there, hiding beneath the blood.

Pass the Salt, Please

Okay, I couldn't resist. But after getting this prompt from Totally Optional Prompts, I focused on the element of salt in the poem. I use salt as a description a lot in my writing, so last night, I played a little word association with salt, and this is what came out.

Once a Salt Girl

When I was younger, I loved like salt --
either too much or not enough. I would crave
all or nothing in intense waves
until I was left with a parched
puckered mouth. There were days I loved
moderately, afraid of the intensity, forcing
myself to go without. I praised
my practicality, my discipline, ignoring
how muted and gray I had become. Now,
I know that love is much more than heat
and the absence of water, more than the gritty
bitter taste left in my open mouth.