fertility dream

it is snowing outside the window we
drag overdue trash into the snow
sort through mail exodus toward both
orange juice and french toast everything needs

more of this snow and its belligerence when we
wake its character is hard and frozen over so we
walk carefully on the abdomen of the earth when last week it was
too nauseous-ly warm for the season barely enough for

snow to stick but in the dream the scar
was unseamed and snow fell out of it
but when you talk of dreaming in a poem nobody knows
if it's real or just a conceit meant to carry us out to some

greater meaning but the snow is only interested
in suggestion for an instant as the wound seems
not to take you but to give you even more strength as I shake
a branch wet snow falls down your neck and the child screams
i seek an alternate quality of light even as
snow tries to swallow us there is ever

in me what makes me want to continue on without dying
to make some house against the weather naming what has changed
or gone then put them in some hymn or order

Lucas Gonzalez is a first generation American writer, artist, and musician born and raised in New York City. His first book, Maple Machine, was published by 826 NYC. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a winner of the Robert Haiduke Poetry Award, Lucas holds degrees from Middlebury College and is currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at Columbia University, where he serves as Community Outreach Editor for Columbia Journal. He lives with his partner in Manhattan and plays around the city with his rock band.