Elisa Gonzalez is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her work appears in Harvard Review, Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight, Narrative, Prelude, The Shallow Ends, and elsewhere. A graduate of Yale University and the New York University M.F.A. program, she has received fellowships from the Kingsley Trust Association, the Norman Mailer Foundation and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She is a Fulbright scholar in the arts, and lives in Warsaw, Poland.




Elisa Gonzalez

After the Ice Storm



I sleep with vegetables cradled against my skin to keep them warm till morning when I will step outside to axe ice from the firewood to hollow a tunnel the shape of my body for the snow climbs in the night as I shiver in quilts straining to summon to mind the place I lived when I was very small: lilac bush by the wire fence shade of big maples the feel of cool water running out to muddy the earth for summer afternoons we longed for ice — I start awake in fear for they say when a person dreams of pleasant chills she’s on her way to freezing straight to death so I fall to dreaming of friends or neighbors finding my blue body bound as if for cooking with these carrots and potatoes picturing their faces puzzlement greed It's the way of the wilderness so they'll say so they're already saying


Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.