Rebecca Valley is a poet, essayist, and animal enthusiast from Saint Albans, Vermont. She graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from UMass Amherst in 2020, and has published work in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Birdcoat Quarterly, Rattle, Black Warrior Review, Poets.org, and elsewhere. She is the editor-in-chief of Drizzle Review, a book review site with a focus on marginalized authors, and curates writing prompts on Instagram @living_room_theatre. You can find more of her work at www.rebeccavalley.com.
NOTES ON READING FROM THE POET:
This poem is named after lake effect snow, which occurs in the north around the Great Lakes, and my own little Lake Champlain in northern Vermont. When cold air, usually from Canada, moves south and hits warmer lake water, it pulls moisture into the atmosphere. The result is snow, snow, and more snow, often into late spring (we got snow where I live only days ago, in late April!). This wintery world of my childhood is the world I try to capture in this poem.
Lake Effect
“As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – ”
– Emily Dickinson
If you asked me then, I would say I had given birth to my brother in the
pewter mirror of my Memere's antique hairbrush, the whole set a wash I
kissed to practice the shape of it.
Having become a mother, I was terrified of becoming a mother. I could
never remember which way to turn the lock.
It seemed that either snow was falling or it was summer. In summer, I
imagined a blizzard. A monster in the cupboard where a desperate animal
lived, not yearning to kill but sick with it.
We were all going hungry.
And time accordians into my brother before he was a man, and how angry
I was that he was allowed to be angry. And how I loved him desperately
the way a mother loves a picture of her son.
If you asked me then, the lake burying and unburying us. I adapted by
talking too much. My brother in his bedroom, tracing blueprints on the
wall.
When I forgot my bicycle, my father backed me into a corner. I never
learned how to love an object in the proper way, by taking it out of the
rain. I like to blame an absence of mothers, but who was I with snow
falling? I was only good at remembering phone numbers. I held my baby
brother while our shoes filled up with crickets.