To make winter – Sean Cho A.

*shook the oaks leaf-
bare, * raked the soft 
soil then * planted pine 
saplings for*. 
                        Now we have January forever. 
Just like * wanted.

[Result: the river is not a river anymore.

Repetition has a way of making even the most brilliant 
miracles seemingly vanish:
the heart of a ice trapped frog 
waiting to thaw back to life,
ice coated river weeds warming 
in the mouth of a witless goose. ]

* want to go there, * want it to be 
spring so we could go to the river 
and throw smooth rocks 
at our reflections, *’d watch 
* watch them ripple back 
together then you’d take my hand 
and say something about 
starting all over.

Key: 
**: you/I 

[ River Noun: a large stream of flowing water] 

Sean Cho A. is an MFA candidate at the University of California Irvine. His work can be ignored or future-found in  Salt Hill, The Portland Review, RHINO, and elsewhere. He is a staff reader for Ploughshares. Sean’s manuscript Not Bilingual was a finalist for the Write Bloody Publishing Poetry Prize. He can be found @phlat_soda