Snow Storm

I knew the tires were bald enough to slip off the
fucking road, to send my Mercury with that paint
that looks like dollar store bronzer, careening off the
highway where I pushed the bastard full boar in December’s snow.

I was told my father fell off his snowy roof in 1963
while shoveling, but I always figured he was slammed
with a spade from his wife, to the back of his neck
that cracked and he went down. Snow must have fallen

down on his lips, each snowflake different. I wonder
if he tasted them as I do now, tasting the flakes that are
falling around me, as I wait for my sister to arrive in a
truck she bought with four good tires not soon after her

husband had the heart attack. Butter and steak, high balls
and Camels, a Nor’easter of pleasure that buried her husband
six feet under. We have probably gotten six feet by now; how
I don’t miss plowing. Plowing that took me out of my ex

wife’s bed. I overused the thermos she bought me. Six hours
it kept the Beef stew hot—hot enough to burn the lips. Six
hours was about a 12 pack of beers in the brains of the state
truck drivers who measured their routes in cases of Coors.

This isn’t as bad as 78, the blizzard that caused my divorce
it lasted a whole case, my floor mats jingled like bells on a
sleigh, a Santa on his way with a V8 state plow rather than reindeer
that I never got stuck in a bank, like this Mercury with four bald tires.

Bailey St. Laurent is a Senior at Keene State College with an English Writing major. After college he hopes to enter work in Student Affairs, but will continue to write poetry for those who want to read it.