Snow 

Please, can you tell me, is it day or night?
—A Sudanese refugee resettled in Minnesota

It could be night, broken—as clumps of snow
fall dark against the sky and could be pieces of the sky’s body
come down, torn edges, someone tore them, some booligan,
the way the desert lions tore at the flesh of the boys running,
how many were left behind to bleach among the rocks
and in memory, things happening that have no name,
mother’s arm hacked and burned, and this snow,
pieces of sky changing as they fall into white
cold that coats all things, the way the night does
when you sleep through it with your eyes open and the roaring.

Published in From the Other Room (Slate Roof Press).

Anna M. Warrock’s latest book is From the Other Room, Slate Roof Press Chapbook Award winner. Besides appearing in The Sun, The Madison Review, Poiesis, and other journals, her work was anthologized in Kiss Me Goodnight, writing by women who were girls when their mothers died, a Minnesota Book Award Finalist. She has held seminars on understanding grief and loss through poetry, and her poems have been choreographed, set to music, and inscribed in a Boston area subway station.

On why poetry matters: “A good poem tells a truth that resonates in the reader’s body and soul—reverberating beyond words.”