Snow

By Maureen Seaton b. 1947 Maureen Seaton

White people leave the express

at 96th Street, collectively,

like pigeons from a live wire

or hope from the hearts of Harlem.

And I’m one of them, although

my lover sleeps two stops north between

Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell

Boulevards, wishing my ass

were cupped inside her knees and belly,

wishing this in a dream thick

with inequalities.

I live on Riverside Drive. My face

helped get me here. I was

ruddy with anticipation the day

I interviewed for the rooms

near the park with its

snow-covered maples. I was full

of undisguised hope as I

strolled along the river, believing

I belonged there, that my people

inherited this wonderland

unequivocally, as if they deserved it.

My lover buys twinkies from the Arabs,

bootleg tapes on ‘25^th,

and carries a blade in her back

pocket although her hands

are the gentlest I’ve known.

She ignores the piss smells

on the corner, the sirens

at 4 A.M., the men whose brains

have dissolved in rum. And tries

to trust a white woman who

sleeps near the trees of Riverside.

When we go out together,

we avoid expensive

cafés on Columbus Avenue, jaunts

to the Upper East Side. Harlem

eyes us suspiciously or with

contempt beneath half-closed lids.

We have friends there,

hidden in the ruins like gold, who

accept us. When it snows,

we walk boldly anywhere, as if the snow

were a protection, or a death.

Source: Fear of Subways (The Eighth Mountain Press, 1991)

Biography

Poet Maureen Seaton earned an MFA from Vermont College in 1996. She is the author of the poetry collections Fear of Subways (1991), winner of the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize; The Sea Among the Cupboards (1992); Furious Cooking (1996), winner of both the Iowa Poetry Prize and a Lambda Literary Award; Little Ice Age (2001); Venus Examines Her Breast (2004), winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award; and Cave of the . . .

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