Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SNOWFLAKES IN HELL, by LEN ROBERTS Poet's Biography First Line: We would all melt from the heat / of our sins Subject(s): Schools; Snow; Students | ||||||||
We would all melt from the heat of our sins like snowflakes in hell, Sister Ann Zita hissed that darkening upstate New York November afternoon as we traced and cut flakes from the heavy white construction paper, such odd angles sprinkled with gold sparkle I find myself even now tilting to make some sense of them, seeing again those I've held, palm up, in gloved hands, those I've watched float on fur collars where my warm breath melted them as I leaned down for this kiss, that kiss, flakes slapped against the windshield to instantly melt in their own unique shapes on those many-miled treks to the Albany and Ithaca V.A. hospitals for brother in his electroshocked cell or father in his drunken stupor, my first love blowing me in the great snowstorm of that year -- the radio kept warning they could not clear the interstate, but we would not stop or turn around, her gold-speckled lips leaving flecks, glittering, that I've stared at for years -- like that sparkle flung with a quick twist of the wrist onto the six triangle tips that formed even as red and yellow hell-flames roared on the blackboard of that third-grade class, Sister shouting that the very heat of our bodies was Satan's work before she asked for a show of hands of who was cold, who was not, the seven sinners made to clear our desks and move to the farthest row against the windows, where those flakes we'd struggled to make neither rose nor fell, just floated there in such erratic shapes, taped to what was clearly invisible. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...IN MICHAEL ROBINS?ÇÖS CLASS MINUS ONE by HICOK. BOB YOU GO TO SCHOOL TO LEARN by THOMAS LUX |
|