Let the ink drain from the calendar, each little box emptying out its pockets. Let doctor appointments and committee meetings and car repairs fall to the floor. Let the cat’s teeth be uncleaned one more month. Let the book club keep reading the same coming of age novel into September. Three dinners with friends, two […]
Merie Kirby
Merie Kirby teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems, and has been published in several journals, including Whale Road Review, SWWIM, West Trestle Review, and North Dakota Quarterly, with work forthcoming in The Prose Poem and Scientific American. You can find her online at www.meriekirby.com.
The Job of Ice
St. Paul, mid-January, car to daycare, typical sidewalk patchwork: compacted snow, scraped concrete, shiny ice, a sharp, abbreviated slip that doesn’t quite end with a fall. I hate the ice, I say. What even is the job of ice? asks my son. In summer I detailed the jobs of worms, mosquitos, rain, bees, convincing him […]