Snowed In (a cento poem)
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed in. -Sylvia Plath
A late snow beats with cold white fists upon the tenements
Beyond the window pane the world is white
white as those infinite blank pages placed on my writing stand
The winter evening settles down
in the same unending white
I stare blankly at a world bereft of color
The wet snow falls. It muffles sounds and colors
snow banking the door.
White silence fills the contours of my life in the unforgiving whiteness of the room
Only in the bedroom, a candle shows an indifferent yellow flame
It flickers cold, stingy, not promising anything
It will not last the night.
Acknowledgements: Lola Ridge, Delmore Schwartz, Anna Akhmatova, TS Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke,
Princess Shakishi, Adam Zagajewski, Sara Teasdale, Virginia Hamilton Adair, Anna Akhmatova,
Bella Akhmadulina, Edna St. Vincent Millay
About the Poet
From 2004 to 2009, Joanna C. Migdal lived in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, a vibrant artists’ and writers’ colony where she published a collaborative book of poetry and artworks entitled My Quicksilver Lover. One of the poems from the book (Ode to the Cedar Bar) appears in Of Burgers and Barrooms. (Main St Rag). In her hometown of New York City, she is active in the group Women You Should Know (WYSK). Her cento of women poets of the past was posted on the occasion of Women’s History Month, 2015. Other works have appeared in Muse/A, Zo, Ethel, and Scarlet Leaf Review. She still has a taste for spicy Mexican and strong margaritas which she indulges in while completing a chapbook of centos, Wild Nights.</i