Ander Monson edits Diagram <http://thediagram.com> and the New Michigan Press. These poems are from Vacationland, forthcoming from Tupelo Press. Also forthcoming is Other Electricities, a novel-in-stories, from Sarabande Books. Snow Amnesia Ander Monson It’s like Jesse was never here at all, he’s been so long gone, like a gunshot that leaves no print— no motive, modus operandi, no finger-trace behind, no black. So many through the crust via snowmobile or car, and you behind, hulking like a buoy, unwilling like a battery, left out in all kinds of weather. The neon sign on the Vacationland motel is like an epitaph through snow: “NO VACA” is all it says tonight, its molecules stirred up, bright like an orange rind would be if those things burned or could be lit or strung up like lines of K-Mart lights and left to dangle after the holidays and all the tourists have come and gone and gone.                                  * All the town has come and come and gone to and from the funeral home which, like a holiday, is rife with lights (is it so important that the dead be this well-lit?) and potluck gifts for both the teary and the stoic. The gravy’s rind is setting as we speak, like how ice resets itself, its molecules dancing (like in Fantasia) back to whole. The snow comes down like grace, and we forget. This is no vacationland for me and mine. Pick any family out of all the phone book Finnish names: that blood has lost a boy or father to the weather, on foot or on a snowmobile. This night’s snow, your brand-new grave. Your ash is black against it until shoveler or storm. Your name imprinted on or in it, only for so long.