Alison Hicks
So The World Unfolds Itself to Us

in a child’s hand
drawing house and chimney
dust that settles
from dust forgetting from forgetting sleep
from mist
waterfall dropping into the valley
to ocean from ocean shell
creature carrying home on its back
scooped up by a child
brought home to mother

Not Winter Yet

No garnet handprints on the sidewalk,
shining in rain.
For the first time I can remember,
the Japanese maples have held on to their leaves.

Rust hangs from oaks, sifts into my joints.
My head charcoal as the sleeping sky:
the forecast is snow.

_ _

Alison Hicks' work has appeared in Eclipse, Fifth Wednesday, Gargoyle, Louisville Review, Permafrost, Poet Lore, and other journals. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the author of two full-collections, You Who Took the Boat Out (Unsolicited Press, 2017) and Kiss (PS Books, 2011); a chapbook, Falling Dreams (Finishing Line Press, 2006); and a novella, Love: A Story of Images (AWA Press, 2004), a finalist in the 1999 Quarterly West Novella Competition. Awards include the 2011 Philadelphia City Paper Poetry Prize and two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships. Hicks is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.

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