Love Rondeau Contest Winner!

Rondeau with NASA Article

The coldest known object in space
is very unnatural: fallen from grace
the now-defunct hunk of metal
haunts the outer dark, starts to settle
into absolute zero’s embrace.

I once knew how that felt. Three days
at forty below, betrayed, a carapace
of ice, I felt unloved and brittle,
the coldest known object

in North Dakota. Beyond night’s black lace
above me something drifts close, grazes
the craft – the friction’s warmth little
but, like yours, enough – a subtle
nudge that now makes something else
the coldest known object.

Heidi Czerwiec

BIO:
Heidi Czerwiec is assistant professor of English and creative writing at the University of North Dakota, where she directs the UND Writers Conference. She is the author of Hiking the Maze (Finishing Line, 2009) and the recipient of a Bush Foundation/Dakota Creative Connections grant, and has poetry and translations published or forthcoming in Measure, Connecticut Review, The Evansville Review, International Poetry Review, and Nimrod.