the small sound of an old radio, some music, words I
don’t understand, a nostalgic howl with lots of brass
and acoustic guitar
the scene where the car is buried by snow, all the cars
are buried in snow, the road just a faint dent
the phone ringing, going to voice mail, the phone ringing
in someone’s jacket pocket, the jacket buried in a pile
of jackets at a party
the rip along your cheek, badly sewn, a scar like a series
of faint pale staples, it was a motorcycle, you say,
or a drunk ex, you don’t quite remember
the leather jacket hanging from a hook on a door,
the lining reeks armpit, vanilla perfume, sick cat,
the ripped inside pocket
the wind makes a small sound, rattles snow from beech
branches, the houses across the street suddenly veiled,
the man scraping with a shovel pauses and shakes off his hat
Christine Hamm is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Drew University. She won the MiPoesias First Annual Chapbook Competition with her manuscript, Children Having Trouble with Meat. Her poetry has been published in Orbis, Pebble Lake Review, Lodestar Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, Dark Sky, and many others. She has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, and she teaches English at CUNY. Echo Park, her third book of poems, came out from Blazevox this fall. Christine was a runner-up to the Poet Laureate of Queens.