Prelude: Wintering
This morning, we are the rust
rippling across the hood, the engine’s
heat carrying us through this thin
dawn. Windows down, heater on, the radio
babbles its sleepy nothing, leaving me to half-dream
along the highway. We keep passing through small towns
that will never be ours, the grimy scraps of local news
jumping from under our treads. And sometimes, when the light
strikes the asphalt at odd angles, and sometimes
when we’re early enough to hear the chatter of dew dripping
down the gutters, and sometimes when this new stale wind
thickens itself around my fingers, I feel all that beyond
sitting just on the other side of my skin. Home
will always return to us. Reach
your hand out the window with me and feel
the exact place your body ends—the exact place
the cold begins.
Ben Cooper is a poet studying creative writing at Salisbury University. He is the winner of the 2025 AWP Intro Journals Award and works as the Managing Editor at 149 Review. His poetry is published or forthcoming in Colorado Review, Guernica, The Penn Review, The Shore, swamp pink, Rust & Moth, among others.