Winter Sticking Its Tongue to a Pole

Snow has its own voice.
It swallows everything else.

It culls the click from dog toenails,
tucks it under with religious tenderness.

It eats the embers from your throat,
stills words before they are spoken.

It is propelled like a very young woman
who has removed her white brassiere,

and flings it into an unimaginable corner,
with an abandonment you can see she does not feel.

It says O, O, and O.
Its flakes are infinite as binary, discharging all doubt.

It falls through the night, sighing.
It seeps through the night, singing.

God does not love me, snow says.
I am December. I am forever. I am despair.

The world wrapped in slapdash skin.
The world wrapped in methodical air.

—EMILY SCHULTZ

(Originally published Christmas, 2005.)