Snow Day

Cozy, cozy
Cozy, dozy
Cozy, cozy
Snowy day.
I'll stay tucked in
From toes to nose
From now
Until late May.

Just in Case

by Jen Hunt, from the archives

If my clock radio turns 12:01
on day one of the new year
I vow to chuck this roll of yellowed gauze
in donut-shaped tin
tucked in a teapot together with the remains
of my dead grandmother’s
medicine chest

I have moved it
from New Jersey to Dallas
all the way through middle America
and down into my in-laws’ basement up
in Outagamie County, Wisconsin
four times in all

I have made room for this tin
where there was none
in closets of one bedroom student apartments
when three of us occupied
a four computer, five bookshelf, no TV, one car,
graduate-student submarine
When you live with a crib
in your kitchen, you think
about downsizing
a
lot

In my mind I have
rearranged, released, discarded
this canister a thousand times

Somewhere a purse-lipped docent
at the Historical American Toiletry Museum
is waiting to put a check by “Ordinary Gauze Tin” on her preservation list

If the world does not collapse tomorrow
she can find mine in the dumpster on January 2
Until then, I’m holding on,
just in case