MASKS LITERARY MAGAZINE
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"A Winter Landscape Within a Jugendstil Border" (1902) by Hermann Hirzel via the National Gallery of Art

by Wendy BooydeGraaff


January snow falls wet onto grass still green. I’ve
always wanted to live in a warmer climate. Michigan’s

fate is semi-tropical in thirty, forty years. The lime
tree spindles in my kitchen, its leaves are gone, and one

juicy lime hangs from a flexible branch. The ball
drops lower, lower. Once I pluck it, will it be the end?

White mold creeps up the half-inch trunk. Just a stem,
really. I spray the speckles with soapy water laced with

cayenne. These purple hours of in between—it could go
either way. Night or day? Life or death? Warm or cold?

I pull sleep like threads from an old sweater. Out
side the dark sparkles with cold flakes

and I breathe in the front yard’s maple promise
which I take to mean I have a future though the

trees only watch out for themselves. And can you
blame them? Come spring, the chainsaws march

​
up and down the streets, replace branches with
air and hundred-year trunks with grass.
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Wendy’s fiction, poems, and essays have been included in Another Chicago Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, The /tƐmz/ Review, NOON, and elsewhere. Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, she now lives in Michigan. ​Twitter @BooyTweets
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MASKS Literary Magazine is sponsored by the Columbia College Chicago Library and was founded as part of the Aesthetics of Research Program-an ongoing series of exhibits, events, and other shenanigans dedicated to exploring the role that libraries play in artistic process, creative community building, and resource-sharing in the arts. 
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  • Featured
  • Issue
  • Interviews
    • Natalie Arriola
    • Kim Chinquee
    • Melissa Meier
    • Miya Turnbull
    • Molly Yingling
    • Kate Wisel
  • Submissions
    • Guidelines
    • Contests
  • About
    • Masthead
    • Our Mission
  • Buy