PATRICK MEIGHAN
ONSET
My mother cries it is snowing in the upstairs hallway.
She washes the walls with snow
From room to room
Searching for her mother’s purse,
Her mother who died forty years before and now sells snow.
My mother’s purse is downstairs where she left it.
For two hour she removed every item,
Lipstick, paisley folded mirror, brush and comb,
Until the purse was empty,
Then refilled it, then removed the contents
Once again, searching for that one nameless thing
That defines for her the present, the sand that slips
Through fingers of trees. Katherine, my father calls.
She’s muttering about the penazenka with gold clasps
She remembers from childhood. It is snowing, Katherine yells.
I hear my father’s footsteps, his firm, gentle voice,
The one with which he marshaled me to sleep
Saying it was okay to spit at neighbors from a balcony
When a nightmare awoke me as a boy. I cry for him.
He calms her, guides her to their bed.
It is snowing. It is always snowing.
PATRICK MEIGHAN lives the life of a nomadic adjunct, teaching poetry, journalism, and composition courses at Saint Anselm College, Manchester Community College, New England College, and Southern New Hampshire University. His poems, reviews, and translations have appeared in online and print journals, and his second chapbook “Poems for a Winter Afternoon” was published in December. He is the co-editor of “Images from Ruin,” an anthology of 9/11 poems and art, and his first chapbook “Jurisprudence” was published in 2014. He earned his MFA in creative writing-poetry from the low-residency program at New England College in 2013.