This selection, chosen by guest editor Livia Meneghin, is from Some Days the Bird by Heather Bourbeau and Anne Casey (Beltway Editions 2022).
As I struggle to be grateful for even
the oxalis overtaking my garden
once again
by Heather Bourbeau
I.
Today, we will gather outside,
say brief thanks, share bounty
baked and brined. Jackets and gloves.
Selfishly, we will thank gods for the dry.
Tomorrow, we will pray for rain.
We will have leftovers, complain
of bellies too full. Groomed to
Augustus Gloop, drown in chocolate.
II.
Today, hand in butter, I stare out at my garden,
make mental list to rip from roots
oxalis, nasturtiums, wayward vines
before I see the rose. Yellow. Audacious.
Fragrant. Out of season. A summons.
To honor the testament to water,
hail the return of spiders and worms
to a lush, low lying green.
A young camper will brag,
“I have already kissed five banana slugs,
and I am only seven.”
I will see how blind I have been,
how much I need to catch up.
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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