tundra

There is still so much snow and ice and cold, great, enormous drifts of it, so much so that it feels like we may never be free of it. I can't remember anytime in the years I've lived in this neighborhood where there were waist high walls of snow on either side of the sidewalk on some streets, despite the plows and trucks that hauled so much of it away last week. I was in my grad school apartment in Lincoln Park during the 99 blizzard, and that was deep, but this is a little ridiculous. So I wait and fend off winter with an abundance of chocolate and grilled cheese. Also new poems, which are coming along nicely. Yesterday, I sent some work to a journal I haven't submitted to in years, somewhere where for the longest time I tried so hard to get in when I was just starting out. By the time I was writing anything good, I realized that my work was probably a little too experimental for their typical aesthetic. Lately, I have noticed a few shifts in editorial directions, or maybe not a shift but an expansion, so I thought maybe I'd give it another whirl. It makes me a little nervous, but I vowed to actually send things out again in earnest, not just on whims and by request, so we'll see how it pans out.

I keep telling myself is probably the worst of winter, this waiting for something even a little like spring, a thaw, a day warmer than 30 degrees, anything...I am so tired of spending so much time piling on layers of clothes and then having to take them all off then start again. Pretty much the only warm places are my shower and the studio, where it is actually too hot, so hot that it makes my soaps softer than I would prefer them to be. There were a couple bars too close to the radiator and they were a little misshapen when I went to wrap them. I've been leaving the window open, but fear that pigeons or bats or some other urban creature seeking warmth will wander in since there are no screens. I myself feel a little myself like crawling in somewhere small and warm and sleeping til spring...

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