Two poems by Samuel J Fox

Self-Portrait with Wretched Snow Angel

By Samuel J. Fox

The birds alight through the downfall and onto the powdered sidewalk.
Their talons leave marks, calligraphy of poems, printed on 
the blankness of a cold-pressed world. I stumble through its door,
winter’s leavings and beatitudes, scaring feathers to break open.
 
The first severe snow brings with it a cold so bright it cleanses the air
into glass. Grey as dovetails. Clear as holiness, near transparent.
I lay down in the perfectly untouched fallen sky. I flap my arms as if 
I could migrate to a warmer, simpler world. My flesh burns in its freezing.
 
Standing, my imprint is a shallow dent in the page of my front yard.
I will not call it a poem. It is a wretched shadow’s negative. But, I love
the way it lies beneath my house on the hill, a dazzled character 
in nobody’s mythology. A protagonist in a gospel enrobed with sleet. 




Self Portrait with Rain

The windowpane isn’t the only body
made of glass. My girlfriend of late
discovered my tendency to stare at men
like most men stare at women. We sit
inside a suave coffee shop, where jazz
doesn’t help to drown out the dejection
in her voice when she asks why I bother
to still sleep with her. I watch the water
condense on the tall panes of glass, roll
down and cohere to other globules of water.
The water doesn’t mind other water.
It easily mingles and doesn’t reject itself.
 
I walk her out to the car, holding her
loosely: too much so. She takes her umbrella,
folds it, and, without a word, leaves.
I stand in the rain. The rain is an embrace
I neither want nor deserve. In Spanish,
rain is a she; in French, it can be a he. I too
am rain, my body a reservoir filling
to the brim of all that it can bear to hold,
my lack of words a surface rippling.



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 About the author: Samuel J. Fox holds a B.A. in Literature from Western Carolina University. Samuel is published in Iodine Poetry Journal, Rat's Ass Review, and Broad River Review where Samuel was a finalist for the Ron Rash Award. ​Samuel lives in the Piedmont of North Carolina.

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