Sara Sowers-Wills
​

Polysemy in Snow

i.
The survivor survived the cold.
The survivor survived the coyotes.
The survivor survived eco-collapse

ii.
and the road.   Asphalt hills      sealed
in ice           in colorform          cracked
vinyl         home disguised       in time
frostlips         snow bricks        in static
broken           channel in          sepia in
dark  thoughts   you  know  the  kind
in plague   in plague   in plastic   sac-
red roots       birch maple     in asphalt
fossils    in iron rich      eyes    the road.

iii.
Survived the raid on fact, fac-
simile of fertility, cleft heart
too beat to swipe left
tanks flattening clover,
insufficient to combat
the atrocity of athleisurewear
during the end of times--
the survivor presses forget-me-nots
into the sheetrock
the survivor presses
the orphans for answers
the survivor presses
his own smoldering hands
into the snow.

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Sara Sowers-Wills teaches linguistics and writing at the University of Minnesota Duluth, where she writes and pursues research in cognitive linguistics, sound system development, and constructed languages. Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Interim, and Denver Quarterly. She is inspired by the explosive sunrises and extreme cold in Duluth, Minnesota, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.