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This appears in a pre-2010 issue of cc&d magazine. Saddle-stitched issues are no longer printed, but you can requesting it “re-released” through amazon sale as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book! Email us for re-release to order.

Chicago

Michael H. Brownstein

I have come back to this place of snow
and frozen water. A hard wind forces
snow snakes across plowed asphalt. Already
the white shine of winter is dirty grey.
I have heard the tall buildings make this place
immune to tornado. Once Stephen and I
walked from the bus stop to our apartment,
the wind like infantry at close quarter.
Stephen flagged a cab with a block to go.
We have hurricane winds, but no hurricanes;
a rising lake, but no floods; accumulations of snow,
but no whiteouts. I have traveled far.
It is late and it is not late. Stephen collapsed
on a bus, an episode of the brain, and vanished
into a system offering little help. I moved
to a house ravaged by squirrel and termite.
Snow covers dead leaves I do not rake.
A small pond in the back is half frozen.
Dead weeds bend to the wind, break. Lately
I have worried over a legacy, my daughter
hiding in the closet crying; my son
on his dinosaur rug placing models
of komodo dragons and tribobibites,
pumas and saber toothed tigers,
men and broken pottery.

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