fall 2021
Table of Contents
Return to Home PageThe Graveyard Metaphor for Euphoria Kaye Miller
Between Then and Then Millicent Borges Accardi
latchkey fragments Frances Boyle
She's a Pretty Bird Susan Zimmerman
On the Straightaway to the Rockies Great Grandpa's Grain Elevator A Nova Scotian Night Light Ryan Smith
Late August at the End of the World Bren Simmers
Say It Delicious Berry-Picking Laura Cesarco Eglin
i decay, bro erica hiroko isomura
No One Knows How to Be Good Emily Kedar
Making the Most of Our Voices Ken Victor
Upon Watching the Rotation of the Earth Charlotte Vermue Peters
Swans at the Golf Club Ruth Daniell
What We Carry on a Pilgrimage Granada, Take Three Elena Johnson
When I See Lake Water Kristin LaFollette
A wrist, a wren, a small knife Ellen Stone
Boy With Orange Phillip Watts Brown
Somewhere within Kostanay, Kazakhstan Justin Timbol
She’s a Pretty Bird
When I say cuckoo, you think cruelty,
thieves, parasites. Heartless, abandoning their eggs
to be hatched and fed by strangers—a shocking
perversion of maternal feeling, writes an expert.
More shocking still, their ruthless progeny—
shoving the rightful eggs from the nest,
uttering their deceptive cry that mimics a host
of hungry fledglings. What else did you expect
from cuckoos? They didn’t ask to be hatched
in someone else’s nest. They didn’t contrive
that tender spot on the back that jostling activates
to sabotage and murder. As if the parents
could do anything but drop their eggs
in the nests of strangers, being cuckoos.
As if the new-hatched baby had any
choice but to swallow the whole future
of the rightful heirs.
Oh, the cuckoo she’s a pretty bird,
she sings as she flies—
she never gets lonely
till the first day of July—
Once, you’d thank God for the cuckoo’s cry.
May we live to hear it again, you’d say.
Harbinger of good luck, best if heard by the right ear,
still lucky enough by the left.
They say the Irish cuckoos wintered in the
south of the Republic of Congo,
brought home summer on their wings.