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Sacred Season
Somewhere at the furthermost tip of this city, there is music alternating in the falsetto jowls of wind. Teeth marks into infinity, all the sawed wood will be wheeled in for winter. There is nothing more explicit than this: a threshold of trees disrobed, a narrative of light in a window, a paradisal of ice like hung chandeliers. Transitions are hardest for us. Detained by weather, flux of indecision, resistance to change-- We are dug in for the night, to dip bread in a crock of bouillon, to age, to dismiss all the things that enter our lives only peripherally noticed. The fiery stars replicate our fingertips, human failing to let the errant intrusions slip through them--as now, outside after an interval of silence, the almost inaudible sound of someone shoveling the first snow from their walk.
Cynthia Atkins
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Cynthia Atkins was born and raised in Chicago, IL. She earned her BFA and MA at the University of Illinois, and an MFA from Columbia University's School of the Arts. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals including, American Letters & Commentary, Bloomsbury Review, BOMB, Caketrain, Chelsea, Denver Quarterly, The Florida Review, Good Foot, New York Quarterly, Seattle Review, Seneca Review, Sou'wester, and Verse. She currently teaches literature and creative writing at Roanoke College, and is artistic director of Writers@Jordan House. Atkins is also a visual artist and lives with her husband, writer/artist Phillip Welch and their sons on the Maury River in Rockbridge County, VA.
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RL
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