in Michigan and I am sick for loves who leave and move downstate or only across town. & Superior’s shores melt late into the year and I’ve left loves there too — disguised as smooth stones, my chest as pack ice which will crack open unexpectedly to swallow you whole. Forty-eight people drowned last year in Lake Michigan and I dream of glaciers a mile thick rumbling slow overhead, the weight of the holocene pressing the life out of all of us and on into another winter. & I am sorry for washing up here, all tangled rigging and exposed ribs, the blood-rust flaking off my lips, staining all your clothes. I didn’t mean it. & we haven’t met yet, but darling the forecast is calling for another blizzard. Downstate, the salt trucks patrol the highways. & I wrote this forever ago.
Kenley Alligood is a poet and writer living in Marquette. Originally from Georgia, she now spends most of her time, coffee in hand, watching the snow fall. She is an associate poetry and shorts editor for Passages North and her work has appeared most recently in Feral. Twitter: @alligood_k; Instagram: @bottlerocketreadingseries.