Four Winter Poems Shoveled Out of Snowy Archives

I am in a slump. Attempts at new poems look more like words piled up in messy mounds. Unlike the cluttered drifts of toys in the kitchen corner and living room rug, there is no fun behind my word piles. Just confusion and frustration. For now. The few free minutes I have tomorrow, yesterday, and when? have not been enough for me to sort through my thoughts.

So while I wanted to have new sonnets written by now, I don’t. Instead, the second major snow storm of the year has inspired me to shovel out poems I have written about winter and snow.


Inside Winter

This is to toes lazy and snug inside red flannel slippers,
bones lost in looseness of gray cotton sweats.
Silver radiators rattle and hiss.
Coffee steams in my faded thermo-mug,
knees and nerves bounce to caffeine
and the jittery Monk improv on “Nutty” –
trills and staccato chords swiftly falling
and drifting like white flakes
speeding down in a blizzard haze.
Feet tap, pen scribbles across the page.
I become part of this rhythm, lost in keys,
a note in a chord, a single snowflake.
Feel like a small note in layers of compositions,
somehow part of worlds beyond walls.
Outside the windows, branches bend to the wind,
icicles hang from wires, highways stretch into colorless skies.
Beyond these bricks and boroughs, more worlds.
And within all this, I am sitting in a wooden armchair
under a circle of lamplight,
drifting in and out of Monk tunes –
small as the fine-point pen in my hand,
wrapped inside layers of winter.


Pomegranates in Winter

Tired of lying in frost
she seeks heat in the mahogany room
where congas split cold air into Antilles

and trombones shine like solstice.
She undresses stiff February branches
drapes the equator around her shoulders

as rhythms enter her and undulate
like the sheen of desire.
White threads of smoke

exhaled from her lips
wrap her in a chiffon cocoon
and transform her into tropic weather.

The man whose warm hand she recalls
when she lies in glacial darkness
reaches in and thread by thread

unravels the white fabric around her
takes her hand, whirls her
onto the dance floor. Bodies entwined

they sail into boleros
sway to string solos, pebbles shake in their hips
the words gardenia y corazón falling

like ivory petals upon their skin.
She is porous and thirsty
wanting to drink syllables

from his tongue
wanting to plunge
into his shoreline

taste his fruits
wanting to take his pomegranate
lips, peel them, melt the seeds

in her mouth. If only she could lie
in these latitudes
degrees away from winter devotion

without the weight of wool
and the branches
hissing in the wind.


Once Upon a Snowy Night

blizzard snow spins
a spell
on the night scene
jewel flecks haloing
street lamps
lighting lashes darkness split
into spectrum
dainty white sprites
feather the tongue
as we taste
the sky
and its moods
bitterness
of northern sierras
aggravated fronts
from the south
conceive
crystallize
shine
mask the weathered concrete
trash trails covered
in white dunes
a fairy tale
written into the city’s
gray pages – this
the happily
ever after
of our timelocked
wage-measured
keyboard ticking hours
time to curl up
under a worn-out fraying quilt
listen to and watch
the million acrobats
s k i p p i n g
c a r t w h e e l i n g across
fire escape steps
and rooftop ledges
dancing to
harmonies of
winter
woodwinds.


F Train over the Gowanus in the Core of a Blizzard

Snowflakes puddle on coat shoulders and forearms then stream down and drip from sleeves and elbows. Around thinsulated boots, steps liquefy into gray. Wet diamonds glisten on knit hats. Outside white jazzes down to Mingus’s II B.S. In the beginning, bass alone emerges from a solitary place like solitary legs walking into the streets until joined by rows of feet and legs moving to the same jolt of the train. The snow and Mingus, wide melodic reach, fingering chords across Brooklyn panorama, the blast from between sliding doors at Smith and 9th sweeping through, swirling snow drifts into our eyes where horns rise up, some taking turns with an aside, some in harmony, all elevating me to bodiless bridges where highways and rooftops dissolve. Tonight we look up from our laps, recalling the flakes we caught with our tongues, calves awakened from trudging through snow heaps, wear the train’s warmth like a blanket, knowing these insulated rides are easily forgotten when we enter unweathered tunnels and return to the singularity of our selves. Even though the whirling snow limits the sight, shrouding the waxing moon, there are no limits to the expanse of sound and the breath that exhales from outside the doors.

A Song of Sonnets

Every year before reading Romeo and Juliet with my eighth graders, the sonnet comes alive, becomes a modern, living, community experience. We study its history and structure, paying specific attention to Shakespearean sonnets as a way to transition into the play. Students also write their own sonnets, and at the end of the unit, we have a Sonnet Slam. This celebration always renews my appreciation of the form. Though some students resist it, most find guidance in its rules, enjoy the mathematical qualities, and free their romantic and sentimental sides, especially the tough guys who often end up writing the most tender poems and getting the most “Awwwwwwws” during the Slam.

When I first had to write a sonnet in graduate school, I detested it, thinking it kept my creativity on a leash. I yawned and rolled my eyes when I had to read Milton, Donne, and Shelley. I wanted to beat my head against my desk as I measured the syllables and beats. Writing a sonnet was even more frustrating; it felt as if I were just trying to fill in blanks with random words that pounded in my ears with a monotonous two-step beat and did not resonate with meaning or linguistic ingenuity.

Over time, I began to read a wider range of sonnet styles and could see beyond its rigid foundations. I realized that many poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who I fell in love with in college after my professor Donna Masini recited his poems to the class, were sonnets; I was able to understand how his unique structure contributed to the emotional intensity. I read Claude McKay’s “America” and “The White House” and found the strict iambic pentameter soothing combined with the difficult racial issues explored. Reading Billy Collins’ “American Sonnet” and “Sonnet” helped me retain a sense of humor about the form.

The more sonnets I read and write, the more mystery, surprise, difficulty, frustration, and delight I find hidden in their syllables, stresses, and syntax. Here are three I wrote, all inspired by motherhood. The first poem, "Motherless Christmas", recalls a Christmas when my mother was in the Philippines while the rest of my immediate family (father, brother, and husband) ate at a Cuban-Chinese restaurant in Corona, Queens - how we pined for her homemade dishes! The next poem, "Abstaining", was written when I was pregnant with my first child, and it's about something I couldn't have at the time but really wanted. The last poem, "Sonnet to Silence", comes shortly after my daughter was born; it is also about something I pined and longed for: quiet.

Looking back, I never thought my words would feel at home in the body of a sonnet. But after revisiting it over and over again, my words have found its rhythmic pulse soothing yet monotonous. They have found its walls freeing and comforting. And its limited space, three quatrains and a couplet, leave just enough room to venture without too much trepidation, still allowing words to wander and fill the spaces.


Motherless Christmas

On Christmas with my mother in ‘Pinas
the lights are dim, the kitchen is empty,
and no grain of rice, noodle, or lumpia
to taste. In the fridge, moldy adobo
in plastic quarts, tomatoes festering,
piles of pigs’ feet, bacon, hard loaf of bread.
It’s just a treeless, wreathless, giftless day.
Empty, carpeted space is our shrine.
Nativity scene hidden in garage
while evergreens whip against shutters, bring
wind in. Instead we abandon the house,
eat out: asados, maduros, rice, beans
make us quietly crave her steaming plates
that warm us like round, fresh lumpia wrappers.



Abstaining

If only I could drink once in a while,
have some orange bubbly mimosas with brunch,
set my sunny, spirited afternoon buzz.
Why can’t I have some Belgian ales, when my
husband drinks them with dinner every night.
I watch him slowly pour into frosted mug
and bring to his lips the golden ambrosia
while I, like a recent ascetic, pine
for the forbidden. I cannot endure
this abstinence alone. I will say: Please,
don’t drink beer or wine at home. Stay sober
with me. Have some sympathy pregnancy.
It’s just two more months of being austere.
When baby comes, we’ll have Chimay and cheer.



Sonnet to Silence

Every day I lose you to Jacinta’s
tambourine and bongo-playing monkey.
When she sleeps, the traffic of dishes,
pureeing rice, Ameda pump prevent
your entrance. Even in the mornings, you
are stolen by grunts and knees on my chest.
In bed at night, on park paths, my brain’s
a shaking tambourine of if only
my baby slept past six and wasn’t glued
to the boob, if belly flab disappeared,
If only I could sit and meditate
without the sound of blocks banging on ground.
Instead as keyboard ticks and door slams shut
I find you on my dusty, lamp lit desk.




References/Further Reading:
Hacker, Marilyn. “The Sonnet”. An Exaltation of Forms ed. by Annie Finch and Kathrine Varnes.

Links to Sonnets:
Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Carrion Comfort”: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=173657;
“God’s Grandeur”: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=173660
Claude McKay: “America”: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20221;
“The White House”: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15248
Billy Collins: “Sonnet”: http://www.billy-collins.com/2005/06/sonnet_billy_co.html
“American Sonnet”: http://poetry365.tumblr.com/post/62623649/american-sonnet-billy-collins