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perhappened mag
issue 7: SNOWFALL

i only listen to bon iver
when it’s snowing &
it is always snowing

KENLEY ALLIGOOD
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.
perhappened mag
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