This vast erasure reveals
By obscuring. Here is the
Black spine of the world laid bare
In a wash of white in which
Only the outlines persist
Of the nearest building, tree,
Telephone pole or person
Pushing against the soft, slow
Implacable tidal wave.
All reduced to archetypes,
The dim shapes loom and recede
As in a dream, leaving no
Sign that they were ever there.
And perhaps they never were.

©

Kurt Luchs (kurtluchs.com) has poems published or forthcoming in Plume Poetry Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, and The Bitter Oleander. He won the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, and has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His books include a humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny), and a poetry chapbook, One of These Things Is Not Like the Other. His first full-length poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up, is forthcoming from Sagging Meniscus Press.

Blizzard has been previously published in Fjords Review.