you have to forgive
the snow for its
waking. ideally, you
occupy a land. you
are accommodated. you
are private school
broad, shouldering  
the quiver of a pollen
weighty spring. instead, you
occupy an apartment. you
are a tenant. you
are watching hived frost
slip through unsealed
window slits and sting
your sore thumbs blue. you
are fused to the mud, you
are dodging silverfish.
you are too broke
to buy space heater.

                     this is not the south you were promised:
                     marigolds, big and batwinged
                     off of yam-sun, blushing your neighbors’
                     lawns, taro ichor leaking from your nostrils.
                     it is january seventh, radnor lake grey
                     and heronless. snow webs white the orchid
                     lounge awnings. wind delivers a cold
                     that coagulates your blood to tubers.
                     the city, saltless, shuts down.
                     at the start of the week you bronzed
                     your wrists on bike handles,
                     thanked for shade the copses of trees
                     that keep the barred owls company.
                     you unnotched yourself from the palm
                     long icicles, the rockies’ paleozoic udders
                     that nourished you, in the name of sun
                     gorged skies. but the weather erupts,
                     unravels, unfurls the cartilage keeping
                     magnolia bloom bonded
                     to otherwise unimpressive bark.
                     This will be the most docile winter
                     of the rest of your life.
                     Soon, your grease sweet scalp
                     will gulp a warm hibernal rain.