Winter Poems: 'It Was So Cold' by Whitman McGowan

Poetry

It Was So Cold

by Whitman McGowan

Paris, February 1986 The horses on the carousel refused to budge. Notes of music froze and shattered with prismatic finality... The mimes couldn't change their expressions. When a bread truck overturned and baguettes were suspended in mid-air pigeons were afraid to leave their roosts for the feast. Women in expensive fur hats could not retract icy stares. Rats went skating on rivers of frozen dog piss. Double busses refused to straighten out continued running in circles indefinitely. Terrorist bombs exploded in s l o w m o t i o n allowing everyone to escape harm. A fountain in the Place Edmond Rostand became a crystal pineapple inhabited by eskimos. A Norwegian with a pickax broke off pieces for souvenirs. Outside Paris waterfalls retreated back into mountains. God Himself became an irrelevant ice cream vendor slowly scooping a ball of lemon sherbet from horizon to painted horizon. ©1986, Whitman McGowan


Whitman McGowan is the author of a series of chapbooks, The Book, Pith and Vinaigrette, Big Petits-Fours, I Know the Aliens Have Come & Ghost Worker; one full-length collection, Contents May Have Shifted; and the poet/performer/producer of the CDs, Sounds Suspiciously Like & Caught in the Act. His latest release is the expanded DVD version of his poetry video, White Folks Was Wild Once, Too.



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