Winter Stories

December 2007

Homecoming for a Foreign Student
Some time after April thaw
a bag of preserved flesh
shall be salvaged from Lake Mendota
and shipped across the world to console a mother:
“Your son stepped on thin ice.”
 

Love in Washington Square

As she exhales a thin fog,
the woman unloads her bag of nuts.
Seizing a stray walnut

her child squeals:
“Look, I got a ball!”
“Drop it you little tramp,
that belongs to the squirrels!”