On the radio in January:
—after Robert Hayden and the Grateful Dead, for Aunt Em
Alex Chand
I wait and hear the birds shake
off the branches, nip
​
off the seeds, no sound (pips)
but the sky and bone white snow:
I watch and hear your hair shed
and shear and disappear
that one snow-spring evening
I sit in the car in a Stewart’s parking lot
upstate in splintering, breaking
sunlight, have a cone of lemon sorbet (wait)
and hear the crank radio fizzle out:
Why does lemon rain wear away?
​
Such a long long time to be gone.—
From California, Kentucky, and Texas, Alex Chand is currently based at the University of Mississippi, where he is an MFA candidate in poetry. He is the recipient of a Fulbright grant, a UniSlam finalist, and an alumna of Barbican Young Poets. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, The Offing, and at the Bloomsbury Festival.