Samn Stockwell

Sound in February

Miss C. by Guy Rose

I hear the snowplow grousing
and the hopeful whine of tires.

I walk to a suburb
to admire the attached garages
and chimneys sprawled on the sky.

A saxophone sidles over
the smell of coffee and toast
in a nearby house.

A pucker of leaves rattles in the ice
by my feet.

The oak table in the house of my second marriage
was singed from the previous year’s fire
and it smelled of burnt houses and chopped garlic
and it bristled with the importance of hunger.

 

About the writer:
Samn Stockwell has been widely published, and her two books, Theater of Animals and Recital, won the National Poetry Series and the Editor’s Prize at Elixir, respectively. Recent work has appeared in Gargoyle and work is forthcoming in Plume and others.

Image: Miss C. by Guy Rose (1867-1925). Oil on canvas. 28.58 x 20.96 cm. Before 1925. Public domain.