Mary Elizabeth Birnbaum

Weather and Mending

 
Hear the wind’s vowels, the consonants of sleet,
and understand its meaning, the loosening
of nails in the window flashing, the weakness
where the leak drives in, north, back, beaten
into whittled shell. Shelter that has to be hammered
and healed in endless rhythm. What used to be
a smooth ride of oxygen, a harsh gust of coughing.
Free long skies attenuate into memories,
white smoke muscling from a chimney, gone.
I get up to seal the curtains. The sway of pale light
through midnight branches wakes me,
promising snow and its cold, brittle violence.

Mary Elizabeth Birnbaum was born, raised, and educated in New York City. She has studied poetry at the Joiner Institute in UMass, Boston. Mary’s translation of the Haitian poet Felix Morisseau-Leroy has been published in The Massachusetts Review, the anthology Into English (Graywolf Press), and in And There Will Be Singing, An Anthology of International Writing by The Massachusetts Review, 2019 as well. Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Lake Effect, J-Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Soundings East, and Barrow Street.