Alliteration Contest Poems: Farmhouse Cellar, Steve Knepper

Steve Knepper edits New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry.

Farmhouse Cellar

Icicles scale

its skin of stone.

Its door’s half-dammed

            by the drifting floes.

Come in now snow child.

Kick off your boots.

Doze stove-side deep

in a dragon’s heat,

lulled by the crack

            of cordwood aflame

down in this vault

            where visions flicker,

this castoff heap,

            this hoarded treasure:

the lacquered rack

            where deer rifles wait,

the ice cream crank,

            canister, and bucket,

the pumpkin pail,

            the pick-axe handle,

cobwebs, box calls,

            and camo hats,

ranked jars of green beans,

jellies and jams,

tomato sauce,

            soup meats, and beets,

your snowsuit hung

            on nail hooks to steam,

among the ghosts

            who gather here.