Snow II

“River Dawn” by Harry Bauld

In the poetry dorm i lived with Gavin the New Formalist
and we eyed each other with mutual suspicion
Gavin often zoning out to Enya
and me carried home by Language school kids
this was in those ancient and honorable days
where students still got letters from home
and mine began “We’re so disappointed in you…”
and ended with “Pay no attention to that rapper.”
so soon i moved to the city and got a real job
and never got to be The Philip Levine of the Bayou
like i wanted and some say Levine is not poetry
and some say Levine once ripped a student’s work in half
“Now we have two terrible poems” 
the way this poem should be crumpled into a ball
in a second it’s gone and there will be no record
that my roommate and i once talked late 
about the four permanent things: guilt regret longing fire
that we read our poems out loud and fought
over a trochee before going out into the moonless night
to settle our differences throwing snow at each other

About the Author

Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans with his wife and three children and edits Trampoline. His first full-length collection, A Season in Heck & Other Poems, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press.

About the artist

Harry Bauld is a poet, painter, translator and teacher in the Bronx. His poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals in the U.S. and the U.K. He was included by Matthew Dickman in the anthology Best New Poets 2012 (UVa Press) and his paintings have been exhibited in galleries in Vermont and in numerous magazines.