This selection, chosen by guest editor Livia Meneghin, is from Some Days the Bird by Heather Bourbeau and Anne Casey (Beltway Editions 2022).
Watching the grass grow
by Heather Bourbeau
The hunched cat mewls at phantom squirrels,
cries for birds that have not come today. Then leaves.
For a moment, I mistake this for quiet.
I scratch myself on a thorn I do not see
for all the lemons mixed with roses.
Then I notice the fig now bent in supplication,
the apple tree suddenly bare of blossoms.
I strain to see new starts rise through earth,
witness the peel of bark, hear leaves unfold
on branches. For a moment, I am like an absent father,
aware what little part I play in the miracle
I almost ignored.
Heather Bourbeau’s award-winning poetry and fiction have appeared in The Irish Times, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, The Stockholm Review of Literature, among others. Her writings have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. A contributing writer to Not On Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond with Don Cheadle and John Prendergast, she has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. Her latest poetry collection, Monarch, examines overlooked histories from the US West (Cornerstone Press, 2023). 
Originally from Ireland and living in Australia, Anne Casey is the author of five poetry collections including one co-authored book. Her work is widely published internationally in The Irish Times, The London Magazine, Rattle, American Writers Review, Nimrod, Australian Poetry Anthology and The Canberra Times among others. Her recent awards include the American Writers Review Prize, Henry Lawson Prize for Poetry and American Association of Australasian Literary Studies Poetry Prize. She has a Ph.D. in archival poetry and poetics of resistance from the University of Technology Sydney where she teaches creative writing.
Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Honey in My Hair and is the Sundress Publications Reads Editor. She has earned a Writers’ Room of Boston Poetry Fellowship, Breakwater Review’s 2022 Peseroff Prize, an Academy of American Poets 2020 University Prize, and most recently Second Place in The Room Magazine’s 2023 Poetry Contest. After earning her MFA, she now teaches writing and literature at the collegiate level. She is a cancer survivor.
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