by Tina Puckett

I’m ice bones in your river,
the sky falling in flakes.
The world comes apart
in white. We let
pianos play and violins vie
for our attention while
the buses idle, purring
outside the fog of window.
The limbs lean and stretch,
warning us of what’s to come:
the beat of rain, thunder,
and hail, the knife of lightning
that slices lengthwise
across the darkness.
In the hint of that light,
in the cloth of shadow,
I see your eyes flicker
open and shut again.
I feel the swirl of storm
rise up in my belly,
my chest burst open
in bloom on one side,
that one heavy blanket
warming over my cold,
stiff joints that reawaken
in the sap of spring.

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Tina Puckett is a graduate student of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry. She has appeared in Phoebe (SUNY), MUSE, The Luna Negra, The Penguin Review, and Ophelia Street amongst other publications and currently has a poem in the Wick Poetry Center’s “Speak Peace” traveling exhibition (2010-2013). She has served as editor for the Rock in the River Literary Series at Standing Rock Cultural Arts in Kent, Ohio since the inception of the series in 2010.