By Kristina Erny

 

As the temperature begins to shift slightly here in the desert, bringing a morning and evening crispness and the desire to cuddle under blankets and wrap toes in woolen socks, thoughts of winter and its more traditional imagery come to mind. In these short winter poems, submitted by MFA students in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from the University of Arizona, images of ice-giants, scraped windshields, caribou hide, snowmen, and white trails through yards bring winter to life. Enjoy these poems and photographs this winter season over a cup of cocoa, wrapped round with mittens. 

Norway Post

: gentle Nor’wester slips
       misted cleft across
but for the snow-crunchbr
steps darkness for a slip—
return to the ship covered in confetti
snowflakes, in gas-lamp—
       glow of an ice-giant’s feast
       lapsing over fjords.

—Meagan Lehr, poetry
 

 

mittens wet (stinging (singing))

snow man & snow
men. heads & bodies ——tunneled & rolled
from a good two -or- three inches - trails
freshly yarded, yards of white
fluff (for packing).
              in the photo,
the head rolls off.

—Kristina Erny, poetry

 

 

[untitled]

A morning of sunlight on snow.

You knock icicles from the eaves

then wish you hadn’t. I put one

in my mouth. It tastes of asphalt

and summer. We will be young.

—Christopher Nelson, Poetry

 

 

Progress

Even though I know the light bulb dimmed 
the small fires of the imagination, that 
central heating sucked the warmth out
from the hearth, extinguishing families, 
and though I know the printed word did more 
to erase stories from our collective unconscious
than all the universities combined,

I still enjoy reading a book, by myself, 
in winter, in my underwear, at home 
in the stone hut inside my heart.

—Neil Diamente, poetry

 

 

Finding Musk Ox

Even the Inuit guide—sixty-five years old—
Said we should get inside.

Sixty-five degrees below—wearing caribou hide—
Is adequate cold.

—Jaren Watson, fiction

 

 

[untitled]

Do they call July winter in Australia, 
where the toilet water spins the other way?

Can winter come without snow, 
without scraping windshields
and power lines breaking from the weight?

—Natalie Cunningham, nonfiction

 

 

Winter II

Tulsa Freeway rumblestrip

You watch the breath between us and the

Windshield, hunch and squint, we can

Defrost or accelerate, not both,

The heater smells like pancakes

—Emily DePrang, nonfiction