Blust’ry Flakes
A poem by Andre Peltier.
On Woolly Bear Caterpillars and Michiganders
It takes a lot of work to survive winter. It takes a lot of gear, a lot of preparations. Buying salt for the driveway, buying kitty litter for our trunks. Making sure there’s blankets and flashlights and bottled water in the car in case we’re stuck in a drift or the car won’t start when it’s below freezing.
Sometimes it S n o w s in A p r i l
"The snow f e l l like a miffed god took bites of cumulus clouds—spat them down / from heaven, o n t o my Midwest."
Wisconsin’s Pandemic Winter
Vaccines will be rolled out over the coming months, but in the meantime, cold weather, isolation, and already-strained public health infrastructure will converge in the state this winter.
Minneapolis, Revisited
"They said the city was a testament to liberal pragmatism. They said that the gaunt-eyed brown children of the borderless had ruined it."
Things My Father Knew in Winter
He says, it was near midnight, a cargo run/on second shift--from Indy to some hamlet flung
Is Michigan’s UP Winter Culture Melting?
In the Upper Peninsula, climate change is threatening the UP200, an Iditarod qualifier race.
A Skillet of Suns and Oceans
"and there I was,/wearing a two-hundred-dollar wool coat/in my own kitchen.../homesick and hungry"
Appalachian Sunday
"There’s no name/for the things/we do to survive."