Snowplough

Alison Pick

Tool of displacement whose goal is loss —
because who among us doesn't need the banks of ourselves
pushed back. I've fallen for you four times now, the way
the snow falls through restraint, the way we say
to what we're leaving: this will just hurt for a minute.
Even speech — eventually — will cede its presidential post,
drop the tie, the fake mustache and make for the cliff-edge, running.
The pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good — someone
proclaimed this, someone who knew the core of the self as the core
of fiction, how we're less than all our parts and likewise mimic
melting. Motor-mouth, metal blades, in removal
motive appears: to clear desire's slippery street, cut a path straight through.
Drifts obscure the back of truth, where we stand in for what we're not.
The plough is restraint, knowing what's best. I am snow. Still falling.

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Alison Pick's works copyright © to the author.