Jamaal May USA
Chionophobia
Fear of
Snow
Fluttering ash
dissolves on your brother’s tongue.
He thinks of you
building a fort from snow
before you knew
what forts were
and he could
stand in your footprints
without touching
the sides.
Can two
snowflakes be the same
on a ghost-white
street where enough gather
to construct
faceless snowmen? In this desert,
sand blinds the
way snow did back home.
Your brother
patches holes
in men with
names he can’t or won’t learn,
and wonders if,
somehow, you are still here,
using an
earthmover to pour sand
into foxholes.
Do you still hear soldiers claw
at the shifting
weight of their fresh graves,
or are there
only silent arms and legs
in your dreams,
bent like strange flowers?
Is the sun a
flash grenade? This heat
is so heavy the
fruit stands buckle and ripple
like mirages,
but your brother shivers
remembering your
mother’s shiver,
the way she sank
to the ground, heavy
with news, and
your body comes home again.
Your
bone-colored casket repeats
its descent,
sinks under the flag, and a thud
resounds. Fades.
He still hears it.
The rub of your
snow pants, the fallout
of snowball
fights, every ice-ball slapping
garage,
snowflakes dragged in circles
by wind, until
they blur like a sandstorm—
he hears it all.
Deafening like footfalls
against the icy
driveway, resonant
like your
mother’s voice, calling
the wrong
name—your name—again.
© Copyright, 2013,
Jamaal May. |