She remembers snow forts packed
with ammunition, ice balls sniveling
down her back, frost stiffening her mittens
before she could even launch a defensive.
Icicles were nearly as tall as little Mary-down-
the-street, who once fell in the sticker bushes,
and, before she screamed herself to death,
had to be rescued by someone else’s frantic mother.
The block was bursting with mothers but
they let you joy all day in the frozen fairy world,
toes hot with blizzard in your rubber boots, without
ever checking to see if you could really stand the cold.
Kate Falvey’s work has been published in many journals and anthologies, including previous issues of Deep Overstock; in a full-length collection, The Language of Little Girls (David Robert Books); and in two chapbooks, What the Sea Washes Up (Dancing Girl Press) and Morning Constitutional in Sunhat and Bolero (Green Fuse Poetic Arts). She co-founded (with Monique Ferrell) and for ten years edited the 2 Bridges Review, published through City Tech (City University of New York) where she teaches, and is an associate editor for the Bellevue Literary Review. As a young woman she worked in a slightly sketchy bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard, mostly because she liked to read on the job and try to match customers with their book choices.