The man from The New Yorker said
winters like I had in Montreal as a kid
are bound for the same
watery bon spiel as the butternut,
Mississauga snake,
barn-building-bee and shades of grey
that are botox free.
But he settled in New York City
where there is a tax for not shoveling
your walk up
and jail time for jay walking
when the traffic lights are out.
Let it snow
another columnist says
over a cheap beer in a bar
called The Bowery
where the barista wears a Eugene Debs
t-shirt, has large breasts and calls herself “Mel.”
I caught a patron leering
at her chain wallet
while the open door let in the midwinter rain.
Which is to say that this whole milieu
makes me think of that diner somewhere in Ohio
(was it?)
where Linda Lavin played Bonnie Franklin
and snowstorms were taken
one day at a time
in the late ’70s when scientists said
the world was experiencing a New Ice Age
as blue crab fishermen on the Chesapeake Bay
were digging through ice with a thickness to rival
Ronald Reagan’s Irish pompadour.
Talking heads.
Next thing they will tell me that “snow”
is just a code word for something illegal
that, like deep cold, makes your nose sting.
is based in London, Ontario. Recent poetry appears or is forthcoming in Cajun Mutt, Writers Resist, Poets Reading The News, Unlikely Stories, NRM Magazine, The Wire’s Dream, Rat’s Ass Review, Alien Pub, and Runcible Spoon. His short story “Detroit 2099” will be published in The Nature of Cities Anthology in 2019.
