Next week on the first day of winter, keep warm with a hot issue of The 2River View, with new poems by Hannah Bessinger, Randolph Bridgeman, Robert Clinton, Lenny DellaRocca, Clark Holtzman, Michael Meyerhofer, Karen June Olson, Corey Smith, Ellen Stone, Scott H. Urban, and Rachel Weber. To spark the stove, here’s a poem from the issue.

Ellen Stone

Snow: the letting go

Today the snow is wandering,
over the backyard gate, fleeting.
Forgetting intention, losing purpose.
Aimless as school out in June.

This is the secret of adolescence.
Hodgepodge, it fills space like snow.
When you leave it, you forget.
But, here and now, it’s called drifting,

a blizzard of momentary. A “What are you doing
right now?” Each thought gathering,
joining onto the next. How snow caves form.
Aren’t they the best insulation?

The igloo of my daughter’s mind. What room
I can find her in, the place she calls
Hers/not/mine. I always thought the bricks
were made of mud, or clay. Not river current,

able to freeze over, but always flowing underneath.
O, no wonder I am always looking
out windows measuring snow. Wanting the covering
but, not remembering. How temporary, how replete.

Ellen Stone teaches at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her poems have appeared recently in Dunes Review, Gravel Mag, Passages North, and elsewhere. The Solid Living World won the 2013 Michigan Writers Cooperative Press chapbook contest.

From 2River, on this night of the super moon, comes the Fall issue of The 2River View, with new poems by Robert Nazarene, Allison Bromage, Mario Duarte, Christien Gholson, Mark Jackley, John Leo, Rita Maria Martinez, Erin Toungate, Meaghan Quinn, Betsy Tighe, and Richard Weaver.

Look this coming Sunday of the super moon for the Fall issue of The 2River View, with new poems by Robert Nazarene, Alison D. Moncrief Bromage, Mario Duarte, Christien Gholson, Mark Jackley, John Leo, Rita Maria Martinez, Erin Pringle-Toungate, Meaghan Quinn, Betsy Fogelman Tighe, and Richard Weaver.

Meanwhile, like pages swirling down like an autumn leaves, here fall two poems from the issue.

Mark Jackley

Twenty Years after She Dies, Your Mom Invites my Daughter to Go Sledding with your Kids

Her voice brassy as ever.
The phone is black,
its cord

curled the way they were.
Night falls
in my dream—

a snowy hill, one moment
bright in time
or someplace

else where laughter
sometimes
bursts in little flames.

Where Did our Love Go?

Diana Ross, I know.

It slipped out of that house she rented up on Chicken Mountain,
padded in bare feet
to the moonlit gap between
the porch and barn and stopped
to wiggle toes
in clover,
and maybe for the first time,
breathed.

Mark Jackley has poems in Fifth Wednesday, Sugar House Review, Tampa Review, Talking River, and other journals. His recent chapbook is Appalachian Night. Jackley lives in Sterling, Virginia.

Follow the summer sun over to 2River and sit in the shade with new poems by Fang Bu, Anna E. Childs, Lenny DellaRocca, Maria Elting, Marcia Hurlow, William Knudsen, George Moore, Taylor Rickett, Mary Ellen Shaughan, and Corey Smith.

The temp’s building fast to the release of the 19.4 (Summer 2015) issue of 2RV. To up the heat, here’s a poem from the mag by Maria Elting.

Stems (a revelation of suicide considered)

I should like to keep the flowers fresh by the windowside
I should like to dry and press them free from the brittle grief of wilting, you below,
So, do not, just yet, go.
A week, a month, next Fall, fifty Falls from now but
a plot and stone grow no green that is more becoming
than the pink Spring of your cheeks this morning, in bed,
me beside
fifty Falls will come, come rushing, come quick
they will come to you so—do not so quickly run from me, while the flowers are fresh
and your dear soft skin going rosen and gold,
announcing a summer so lustfully near.