January by Brandon McQuade

Snow settles calmly on the handrail.
School is cancelled again,
and down the street another car
has drifted into the ditch.

Snow has no remorse, it just is.
Like a steel trap sinking its teeth
into the hind leg of some unsuspecting prey,
it has no hunger or motive. It does not want.

There’s something soothing about snow,
when it falls like this, when it lays down
like a wet pelt over the earth’s welcoming lap.

When it’s almost as if wind has never existed,
and the world has never known
such quiet.



Brandon McQuade is an award-winning poet and founding editor of Duck Head Journal. He is the author of two poetry collections, Mango Seed and Bodies, for which he was awarded the 2022 Neltje Blanchan Memorial Writing Award. He lives in Northern Wyoming with his wife and their children