This selection, chosen by Guest Editor Maggie Rue Hess, is from Elegy with Clouds & by Robin Turner (Kelsay Books 2025).
Little Bird
for Artie
The hottest month of the hottest year
on record. August in Texas. Unrelenting.
Mother had died just the month before.
My mother. The world kept burning.
And on the news, on our phones, all week the photos
of treasonous men, their arrogant mugshots
marring every screen, suffocating each sensible citizen.
How to breathe through the heat, through the spin
& the grief? How to rescue from harm what one loves?
When a red-feathered bird crashed into our window, it fell
like a stone & lay motionless. Little bird, you said
& stepped out to the porch, bent to stroke, to tap tap her still chest,
brought ice, brought tenderness, prayed mercy.
In the morning you spared me
from shoveling parched earth
& gave up the lost creature to ground.
You knew, knew I would not be able to bury her—
one more once beautiful thing.
Robin Turner is the author of two poetry chapbooks: bindweed & crow poison (Porkbelly Press) and Elegy with Clouds & (Kelsay Books). Her work has appeared in Anacapa Review, Pithead Chapel, Rattle, Rust & Moth, Verse Daily, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. She is a longtime community teaching artist in Dallas currently working with writers from the Cancer Support Community of North Texas. Find her on FB and IG @robinsmithturner.
Maggie Rue Hess (she/her) is a PhD student living in Knoxville, Tennessee, with her partner and their crusty white dog. She serves as Poetry Co-Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts. Her work has appeared in Rattle, Connecticut River Review, SWWIM, and other publications; her debut chapbook, The Bones That Map Us, was published by Belle Point Press in 2024. Maggie likes to share baked goods with friends and can be found on Instagram as @maggierue_.
