2 December 2004 | Vol. 4, No. 4
Avalanche
I haven't had sex like that since:
Aspen, snowed-in,
your thumb
deep in my anus, heart
half out of water.
Complete—
you skiing Pyramid Peak, leaning into
turns, body swooshing the summit. Sky unzipped.
At your age, my father says he scaled icefalls, and played trombone
on Ithaca rooftops. We can never
wholly take in the art
we become, or remember
quite how it happened. Did we really make it to Mount Elbert,
over 14,000 feet, or did
I wait at the bottom?
You love like a child
rolling down a snowy hill.
What, if anything, is blinding?—
Moths release from rangy grasses.
Hold nothing back. The earth
cracked open, rain—
a great truth lets in.
About the author:
Jennifer Chapis holds an MFA in creative writing from New York University, where she is currently full-time faculty in the Expository Writing Program. Her poems have recently appeared in Barrow Street, Hayden's Ferry Review, McSweeney's (online), Minnesota Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Spoon River Poetry Review, and others. Her broadside was printed with The Center for Book Arts. Chapis is an Editor with Nightboat Books.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Jennifer Chapis at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 4, No. 4, where "Avalanche" ran on December 2, 2004. List other work with these same labels: poetry.
