Tag: bird

Bird by Emily Lake Hansen

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Bird

What does the name for it matter?
It was just a bird, a giant bird,
suddenly landing on the white sand
and then, as if its occasion were both
remarkable and unremarkable,
it paraded alongside the waves,
a small fish in its beak, dinner
and prize. If you’re going
to photograph me, it lifted its knee
like a rockette, at least get my good
side. Though what side of something
so graceful, so momentary could be
bad? I stood with the crowd,
beachgoers with camera phones
and to-go margaritas. We each
wanted to capture it – the delicacy
of feathers, the brevity of joy, earth
before its collapse. What if
I never see this bird again?
So we name it: heron
its supermodel neck, its body
framed on stilts, and yet
capable of flight, of leaving,
and, if we’re lucky, of coming back.

*

Emily Lake Hansen (she/her) is the author of Home and Other Duty Stations (Kelsay Books) and the chapbook The Way the Body Had to Travel (dancing girl press). Her poetry has appeared in 32 Poems, Hobart, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Atticus Review, and the Shore among others. The recipient of the 2022 Longleaf Poetry Fellowship, she lives in Atlanta where she is a PhD student at Georgia State University and an instructor of English at Agnes Scott College.

Three Poems by Lorelei Bacht

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Orb Weaver

As the wife, I have developed
A bad reputation,

Although in truth my nature is
Industrious and meek,

My nights and days tenderly spent
In domestic labor:

Caring for the two little ones,
A fragile construction

Of time, milk bottles, fortitude,
And imagination;

Imagining that he loves me
And will return from work

Inspired and obligated
By the cloud-thin netting

Of quiet, resigned affection
I have woven for him.

My fragile work holds us in place:
It is our home address.

And when he tears it carelessly,
With the back of the hand,

I consume the tangle of silk,
And set to work again.

*

White Bird

No-one remembers
To feed the bird in its cage,
A brush stroke of white

Watching turtle doves
Arrive and depart at ease –
No tether, no bars.

In a small mirror:
A reflection, companion
Unattainable.

Desires the size
Of horizons limited:
To the perch and back.

When we procured it,
You promised regular care,
Like a six-year-old,

Then quickly forgot,
Looking for more exotic –
White bird left behind.

I took up the job
Of feeding your abandoned
Every now and then.

To your wife the chores,
To you the purposeless thrill
Of the chase, the chase.

*

The Homecoming

Two springs after we left the house,
The turtle dove returned –

Morning song: a gentle flutter
Of blue-grey in the pines.

It came back when we stopped wishing
It back – as if it knew

That wanting can never equate
Having, and only flew

Back into the abandoned yard
Long after grass had gone

To seeds, relishing the silence,
The freedom only found

In hopeless, overgrown spaces.
(Hope really is a cage.)

And when I thought I’d lost it all,
He loved me once again.

*

Lorelei Bacht (she/they) is a person, a poet, queer, multi-, living in Asia. When she is not drawing sad little sketches, she writes – too much. Her work has appeared / is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Visitant, The Wondrous Real, Abridged, Odd Magazine, Postscript, PROEM, SWWIM, Strukturriss, The Inflectionist Review, Hecate, and others. She is also on Instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter @bachtlorelei

Treescape by Amy Barone

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Treescape

A peephole to the world outside
reveals shades of green,
brilliant budding leaves.

The collage of trees shines
on a pink Japanese maple
as big crows probe a patch of dirt.

Mockingbirds aren’t chirping;
they’re belting out arias—so much to say
after their winter isolation.

I invited the morning shower
to wash away the cold,
help a heartier spring take root.

Rain made it easier to stay inside
and while away another Sunday.

*

Amy Barone’s latest poetry collection, We Became Summer, from New York Quarterly Books, was released in 2018. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing.) Barone belongs to the Poetry Society of America and the brevitas online poetry community. She lives in NYC.