Blackbird an online journal of literature and the arts Fall 2007  Vol. 6 No. 2

POETRY

Chris Abani
Victoria Chang
Michael Chitwood
Keith Ekiss
Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
Beth Ann Fennelly
Raza Ali Hasan
James Hoch
Cyan James
Julia Johnson
Larry Levis
Khaled Mattawa
Timothy O’Keefe
Catherine Pierce
Jon Pineda
John Poch
Austin Segrest
Louie Skipper
Ron Smith
Robert Thomas
Joshua Weiner
Lesley Wheeler
Charles Wright


JON PINEDA

First Snowfall

Snow layered itself
over the already dead,

those clumps of tomato
plants I’d neglected

from the summer lay
crumpled under drifts,

their bones muscled
with cold near the shed.

I spoke your name,
and it spun there,

our little ghost,
spreading open

its arms until they
were bare limbs

of trees, my neighbor’s
broken fence, this

bright distance
between us.