POSTCARD FROM THE ICE STORM
— Independence, Oregon. January 2021
Dear N—
Gone to bed happy, one hundred percent
chance of a snow day, they say—
midnight—gun-shot reports
of tree-trunks cracked in two,
ice-glazed oak chandeliers shattering
on the rotunda floor. Utility poles
crushing cars, the arctic insurrection
cuts internet access, freezing assets
and truth conditions. I peer out
from under blankets,
crystal chards crunch
under militia boots marching
past on frozen lawns. Limb-punctured
roofs leak CO2. Winter’s back
is broken. The world is not well.
Anymore daffodil
have no business
in a poem.
We’re all gonna die someday
Yours truly,
Living in Oregon, born in Detroit, David Hargreaves’ translation of The Blossoms of Sixty-Four Sunsets, poems by Nepal Bhasa poet Durga Lal Shrestha, was published in Kathmandu in 2014. His own poems appear in Comstock Review, Passages North, Naugatuck River Review, and elsewhere, including The Art of Angling: Poems about Fishing (Knopf). Running Out of Words for Afterwards (Broadstone Books), his first full-length collection, is due out in September 2021.
David Hargreaves is one of the finalists for the 2021 Vallum Chapbook Award for her chapbook We’re All Gonna Die Someday.
