Artist/Award/Artist Statement

David Citino (1988, Literature)
(1947—2005)


photo: Charles B. Wheeler; courtesy of the author

Work Title/Description

One Hundred Percent
Chance of Snow, Accumulating
Six to Eight Inches
by Morning

Snow billows over cracked blacktop
in parking lots of K Mart and Whirlpool plant,
plexiglass domed roof of Southland Mall
where young and old cluster and dissolve
in weekend conspiracies.

Snow blows over churches downtown,
each spire and arch shaped by antique disputes
concerning the shape or taste of God
obliterated now by tons of lovely nothing.

Here's my heaven: Ohio, bitter enough
to set teeth on edge and turn my face red
as litmus paper. Still, for all
our dirty profits, there's more love
than I can use, and more cold.

Near me beneath the ice run
the Olentangy and Scioto. So much
of our lives gets named by what's fallen
I think of the ruddy women and men [...]

exerpt from "One Hundred Percent Chance of Snow..." in The House of Memory (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1990); courtesy of the author