Richard Schiffman
Whiteout
The rooftops are white, the sidewalks vanilla-frosted,
the slush-cup clouds, albino river, fresh-laundered bluffs,
water towers capped in woolen white fedoras, bolls of steam,
an opalescent sky, seagulls knifing whitely by the levitating bridge,
a corpse lain out on morning's gurney, the sun, a wan, white moon
of itself, and from the dough-dull air a squall of listless flakes flicks
crystal dust upon my greying cranium—within which a candle gutters:
I call it my mind. There is nothing in it but wraiths in bone-white ghost suits:
I call them my thoughts. I call them spooks and shades, white on white, invisible
but for two fire-engine eyes, but for two coruscating coals burning holes
through a spectral sheet of cerebration. I call this fire my life, I call it desire
scanning, scanning the snow for that one sole smudge of blood: I call it
God's blood. I call it the world, my love, my lover. Where has she gone?
Wherever has she gone?
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Richard Schiffman has poems appearing or forthcoming in 32 Poems, Alaska Quarterly Review, North American Review, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review, and Valparaiso Poetry Review.
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