Angel in the Snow by Alice G. Waldert

When a letter arrives
with a foreign stamp,
my foster mother

orders me out
where snowflakes fall
like cinder ash.

Plunging backward
into a snowbank,
I become Phaethon

plummeting from the sky
and when I land, the trees
mourn, sagging sisters

burdened by grief.
I make wings with my arms.
My angel flies

above the smokestack
billowing black, while Mutti
burns her secrets.



Alice G. Waldert is a poet and creative nonfiction/fiction writer. Her work has appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, Misfit Magazine, Prometheus Dreaming, Survivor Lit, and other journals, and she has work forthcoming in the Evening Street Review. In addition, she is working on her first poetry collection about surviving childhood traumas rooted in war. She holds an MFA from Manhattanville College.