Episode #140 First Snow - Aria Aber

Close Talking: A Poetry Podcast

Connor and Jack discuss the poem "First Snow" by Aria Aber. They explore the poem's subtle and marvelous use of perspective, the representation of snow and frost, and the poem's resonances with the devastating impact US war and intervention has had on Afghanistan. Learn more about Aria Aber here: https://www.ariaaber.com/ Get a copy of her debut collection Hard Damage here: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/university-of-nebraska-press/9781496215703/ Find Aber's resources to support Afghans here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10-SLGJEb39jpN_vEw8ruvba3iS1BmeU5QoW1AdGEL7M/edit First Snow By: Aria Aber How easy for snow to turn to ice, for snow to disappear the light from the ragged frame of chestnut trees around the warehouse by what’s left of wild chicory, scraped sculptures, weeping dogbane. Hunger borders this land, while snow turns all to immigrants, snow salts the embankment, where turtles wash ashore, literally hundreds of them, frozen hard like grenades of tear gas thrown across a barbwire fence. But who of their free will would ever want to climb that fence to live here, who would pray each night for grace, hoping to pass through the darkened veil of shit, to bear witness to smokestacks, wild champion, knapweed? Who’d loiter around cricks glistening with oil, which, once gone, will, like death, at last, democratize us all? On potato sacks in the snowcapped, abandoned warehouse, there huddle and sit the soiled refugees, bereft, cow-eyed, picking dirt off their scalps, their shelled soles. Among them, wordless, is my mother, and nestled on her lap is I, in love with the light of the first snow of my life, so awed and doubtful still of what lengths the frost wills to go, and what shape it will then take— Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at [e-mail].