Raise and shake. Snow, the encompassing
quiet, blankets the one-car garage sheltering
the two-door sedan. Three figures, mother, father
and me, swathed in a knitted infinity, grasp
proper-sized shovels and begin to clear the steep
drive, concrete river of permanence, soon to be cracked
and obsolete, that runs between ever-rising banks
to a distant street. A slippery unreeling
under a baffle of frigidity. Flakes limn
lashes and lips, dissolve on tongues, and
I swallow to learn the secret of soft landings
in synchrony with a muffled minuet, triple time –
we are three, the ideal number for company
frozen in a globe no one leaves, a scene I carry
Photo by Jessica Fadel on Unsplash.
Ellen Sazzman
Ellen Sazzman has recently been published in Earth’s Daughters, Another Chicago Magazine, the 2020 Mizmor Anthology, Poetry South, A3 Review, PANK, Connecticut River Review, Ekphrastic Review, Paterson Literary Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Sow’s Ear, Lilith, Beltway Quarterly, Miramar, Common Ground, and CALYX, among others. She received an honorable mention in the 2019 Allen Ginsberg poetry contest, was shortlisted for the 2018 O’Donoghue Poetry Prize, and was awarded first place in Poetica’s 2016 Anna Rosenberg poetry competition. She was also a 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2010 Split This Rock finalist. Her poetry collection The Shomer (Finishing Line Press) was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Blue Lynx Prize, a semifinalist for the 2020 Elixir Press Antivenom Award, and a semifinalist for the 2019 Codhill Press Poetry Award.