The afterlife has left me stranded in my sister's house, at the edge of catastrophe She’s having cocktails amid a few ravages of grief here and there while she lays out littered pieces of a breakable life. No self-pity for her. She’s too busy watching the stars run away with the moon. I didn't know enough to be scared. But she did. By Barbara Shields

Snow covers property that lives outside as mold covers our food with soft, white hair and ice preserves our dead-town, traffic-wide as fungus that feeds on fields of highway air. Giant sheets of snow heaped over hills & parking lots as if each colossal animal our children made out of clouds molted its skin or were ripped through the ground, either way—our families freeze where something massive rots. By Joshua Wren

What brave life to see! these few, bunches of brown leaves dead & still clinging to the oak tree, covered in ice & snow standing apart from the rows of others whose every branch is stark bare as if this mistaken one patiently holds this truth to share— (that only we of similar roots will know) Oh—how in the blind face of Time and mindless seasons where so many follow so many reasons to “let go”— we (in this strange company) want to show how best to be in quiet conflict with s