California Frigid Zone, 1937

California Frigid Zone 1937

It should not have been
so hard to understand

a peach
a smile
a yellow pencil
I only wanted something
warm

but California showed me
an icy face each morning
gave me cold shoulder
every night

A vandal
it threw out my poems
from a shoe box

while I picked grapes
and wrote more verses
in the sand

Who knows why
I could not erase a word
blot out a single tear--
nor did I try to
that lifelong year

Notes

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McDaniel, Wilma. (2001) Borrowed Coats. Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn, New York.
Courtesy University of California, Merced Library. Copyright owned by the Regents of the University of California.