Bruno Anthony
Home for the holidays
If snow would come and bleach the usual landscape,
crystallizing each toxin in the sky,
rendering them aesthetic if not harmless,
I could live without the sleigh bells our people
have known for generations only in
a variety of commercial settings, and sing
perhaps "Undecided" by Django and Stephane.
On Twelfth Night I don't want an ersatz
Alistair Sim or parading munchkins
but just the snow and maybe a power outage
so we can watch the flying squirrels raid
the never quite empty feeders and listen
for the impotent wail of tires spinning
on SUVs, and several blocks away
the faithful fire engines and competent roar
of plows on the primary arteries,
but otherwise the silence of the stars.
That has some pedigree, as do the cries
of children loosed outdoors to play on ice,
to sled and throw snowballs in dangerous
exhaltations, sentiment tonight's excuse
for regression, but noises we can block out
by the fire. Let the desperate work go on,
and young ones learn to gather heads: we have
already that, and this, and maybe more.
SUV – Sports Utility Vehicle, American term for car marketed for off- road use.
Bruno Anthony lives in Arlington, Virginia, and has had poems in magazines in the USA, Ireland, Japan and Britain.
Page(s) 21
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The