It was 63 degrees in Las Vegas today, but the palm trees are still covered in holiday lights that tell us this is winter. So many of us have moved here from places with snow that these lit-up vignettes are enough that our memories fill in the scenes with imagined snow. The earlier setting of the sun keeps us inside at night with movies and books, making this a season for stories that we might temporarily miss when it’s warm out and the sunlight is neverending.

Whether the impulse is romantic or familial, this time of year we turn inwards and think about past and the present relationships. Our winter poetry selections wander into memory, question the construction of what’s here now while inner and outer landscapes illustrate the power of place. There’s an intimacy to each of these selections that draw us near.

In “Walla Walla,” Vincent Antonio Rendoni’s cinematic poem takes us back to a Fourth of July with a love that didn’t last. Traveling forward, we couldn’t resist grabbing Shana Ross’ “The Author of This Poem Has an MBA from Yale.” This brief poem wants us to know that “the stock market is just vibes/of rich people.”

Then visit Ashley Kirkland’s “Light,” as a mother and sons attend a school celebration on the Winter Solstice.”..consideration of the darkness present/inside all of us,” she writes, “and the light we know will eventually return.” Falling farther into the magic of the winter outdoors, Lila Cutter in “River Ash” writes, “I’ve lost my mer/to relentless river current/scattered wishes like ashes.” In both poems the natural world is a site of remembering truth.

Finally we return to the past against a present wish as Cathlin Noonan searches through archives to make a new connection to her father in “That Winter, I Find Your Father’s Arrest Notice in a 1940 Newspaper.” As readers we don’t need to know more about the father or daughter because the speaker lets us know that with this new knowledge she imagines changes, that “to watch the snow faintly falling/both of us reborn.”

Walking through the park today with my dog, golden leaves were in piles everywhere waiting for the city to finish removing them. Even though the day time still feels like fall, I’m going to keep reading poetry with hot chocolate by my side, at least until the season is suggested.

Wishing you a wonderful winter read,

Angela M. Brommel
Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor
The Citron Review