Peter Jay Shippy
Soul
A night of freezing rain has turned the snow banks
into Eames, into molded plastic
At the bus stop, our muster lacks punch
Our faces are drawn to our salt-dusted boots
Signs warn children about wasted motion
lest they thaw too soon
The sun looks like a tea stain on Somerset paper
A missal of boys in black hoodies pass smoke
and exhale coronas they look like
Assisi looking for sparrows
before their colors ripen and vanish
Peter Jay Shippy is the author of Thieves’ Latin (Univ. of Iowa Press). He has work upcoming in the The American Poetry Review, The Canary, The Iowa Review, and Verse. His abecedarian suite Alpahville is online at 42opus, eratio, Tarpaulin Sky and Word for / Word. He teaches at Emerson College.