Your Death Explained in Birds
Death is the great egret at the swamp, picking newly hatched green herons
from their cypress nest. I am the pregnant woman on land looking for
something to throw. I am the mother heron, too small to fight back, and the
runt deep in the nest. Death is the egret dropping fresh young birds into
the swamp with barely a ripple. I am the pregnant woman standing horrified
and helpless. I am the mother heron shrieking and snapping on the branch
below. I am the smallest green heron in the nest. I stick my head out in the
stillness after everyone else has gone.
This selection comes from 28,065 Nights, available from River Glass Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Erin Elizabeth Smith.
| Katie Manning is the founding editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. She is the author of Tasty Other, which won the 2016 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and her fifth chapbook, 28,065 Nights, is newly available from River Glass Books. Her poems have appeared in American Journal of Nursing, december, The Lascaux Review, New Letters, Rogue Agent, Stirring, THRUSH, Verse Daily, and many other venues. Twitter Handle: @iamkatmann Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications. She is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, and her work has appeared in Guernica, Ecotone, Crab Orchard, and Mid-American. Smith is a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Tennessee |
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