Leave this city, black ice.
These roads are unusually treacherous.
Snow, thaw, then refreeze--
a polar vortex roars in from Manitoba.
This four-wheel drive offers
little protection from icy roads.
One bad tap of the brakes
will send me crashing into
a graffiti-adorned delivery truck
which states simply,
ICE out.
Or worse,
into the protestors on the corner
of Penn Avenue and 17th Street
in north Minneapolis
on this foggy subzero morning.
Whistles shriek in feverish shrill
in crazy unison with car horns,
and phone cameras rolling,
recording truth suppressed.
Ten black SUVs skulk
on each side of the pitted street,
curbs piled high with sooty snow.
Polished obsidian flanks of fear--
ICE has rolled in.
Unmarked men stalk door to door
in a Latino neighborhood near,
faces shrouded, shadowy brute army.
The salt has not made the roads safe.
The protests change nothing.
The passport I keep
on my front seat means nothing.
We do not leave our homes
because we are too cold,
too afraid, or both.
We are cyphers, faces pressed
against cold glass,
hands zipped tied, hog tied—
frozen blood stains dirty ice.
I pray for the brother and sister
I almost wish were my children
after two years of seeing them holding hands
each morning at the bus stop on 17th,
backpacks with smiling stuffed toys
clipped to the straps.
For their mother watching
her babies climb into the yellow vessel,
and the door close tightly behind.
She scurries up frozen sidewalks
to the food pantry.
Jesus, get me to the next corner,
keep my small clenched hands visible
on this cold steering wheel.
Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New Verse News, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press), Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press), and After the Equinox.
