Inaugural Storm

Priscilla Frake

March 25, 2021

Blizzard of troops at the capitol,

the air tamped and dampened

by the spellbound, snowbound

wait

for something new to be sworn in 

come January 20th. Storms migrate 

across the continent, spirals of

fury 

steered by vague changes in pressure 

and the prevailing winds on Facebook 

and Twitter. Even dire warnings don’t 

stop

crowds from gathering under the scythe 

of the virus, and nothing has ever 

stopped lies from consorting with 

harm.

We wake to a filigree quiet, intricate 

snow-covered branches lacing 

a corseted sky, but tell me how we 

recover

when hospitals are snowed under 

and cold exhaustion seeps 

into any thaw? 

Hope, 

like prayer, needs muscle 

and tendon, sleeves rolled 

at the elbow, and many hands.

Priscilla Frake is the author of Correspondence, a book of epistolary poems. She has work in Verse Daily, Nimrod, The Midwest Quarterly, Medical Literary Messenger, Carbon Culture Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and The New Welsh Review, among others. She lives in Asheville, NC, where she is a studio jeweler.