by Karl Michael Iglesias

 

If we wait through the radiators, spilling
warm secrets like neighbors,
our familiar bones will catch their breath.

And beyond a forecast, who could’ve guessed
my tomorrow would visit at the eve of snow to watch me
float from a heaven and freeze the glowing bridges of noses.

I remember the children I used to be,
enamored with the soft landing and the crunch through a field of
cold hopes. Sections of hope I’d make into angels,

hills of hope I make into people, and homes, and soft
weapons. I think I want love to call me inside now,
my chest a radiator steaming, a drumming dove. and now, running

to warm, I pass a frosted man nestled on my front stoop.
With the snow storm meeting the rock salt, I invite
him inside the building at least. The winter can be a cruel blanket

the city shares. This man, says Are you kidding, I’ve been
waiting for this, placing both hands over his heart,
leaning back, grinning to a falling sky.

After holding myself like a cold lover, the morning follows the storm
I put on all my layers and I run outside to a now mound
of snow blanketing the stairs. The door barely opens

but I plow out with a pair of socks on feet and socks
on my hands. Digging, how neighbors do,
to find that the man, now gone, has melted under all that hope

Karl Michael Iglesias is a Puerto Rican actor, director and writer living in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry can be read in the Florida Review, RHINO, the Brooklyn Review, the Madison Review, the Hong Kong Review and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, to name a few. Karl is the author of the poetry collections CATCH A GLOW and The Bounce—both available from Finishing Line Press.