February
You cannot recall when the sun last shone. Nor does the forecast suggest that it may again. The
word doldrum perks up in your middle laden with helium, lodges itself against your sternum like
a stubborn red balloon. You breathe it to sleep. Or you think you breathe it to sleep when it
wakes you somehow sweaty and cold to a morning of nine below. Your car doesn’t start. Why
would it? There is no place to go but home in this mountain of snowfall blurring ground into
sky— an impressionist painting in real life. A coworker says something like bomb cyclone
blizzard and expects you to care what it means. It means more of the same. It means white and
gray and night that bleeds into day as if languish were watercolor. Something is said about
solstice, but your ears may as well be grown from potato, eyes cloudy with cataracts and still
more blue than sky. If Spring ever does arrive, one river cracks and bends like water reborn.
Another stays thick and icy as this storm.
word doldrum perks up in your middle laden with helium, lodges itself against your sternum like
a stubborn red balloon. You breathe it to sleep. Or you think you breathe it to sleep when it
wakes you somehow sweaty and cold to a morning of nine below. Your car doesn’t start. Why
would it? There is no place to go but home in this mountain of snowfall blurring ground into
sky— an impressionist painting in real life. A coworker says something like bomb cyclone
blizzard and expects you to care what it means. It means more of the same. It means white and
gray and night that bleeds into day as if languish were watercolor. Something is said about
solstice, but your ears may as well be grown from potato, eyes cloudy with cataracts and still
more blue than sky. If Spring ever does arrive, one river cracks and bends like water reborn.
Another stays thick and icy as this storm.
Jess L Parker is a poet and strategist from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Jess lives in Fitchburg, WI with her husband and two-year-old son. Her debut poetry collection, Star Things, won the 2020 Dynamo Verlag Book Prize. Jess’ poems have appeared in Bramble, Kosmos Quarterly, Blue Heron Review, and elsewhere. Jess holds a B.A. of English and Spanish from Northern Michigan University, an M.A. of Spanish Literature from UW-Madison, and an MBA.