Poetry Summer 2014 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Anne Rankin-Kotchek
Letter to the World
from a Dying Woman
& other poems
Sara Graybeal
Ghetto City
& other poems
Tee Iseminger
Construction
& other poems
Lisa Beth Fulgham
After They Sold the Cows...
& other poems
Mary Mills
The Practical Knowledge
of Women
& other poems
Monika Cassel
Waldschatten, Muttersprache
& other poems
Michael Fleming
To a Fighter
& other poems
Daniel Stewart
January
& other poems
John Glowney
Cigarettes
& other poems
Hannah Callahan
The Ptarmigan Suite
& other poems
Lee Kisling
How the Music Came
to My Father
& other poems
Jose A. Alcantara
Finding the God Particle
& other poems
David A. Bart
Veteran’s Park
& other poems
Greg Grummer
War Reportage
& other poems
Rande Mack
rat
& other poems
J. K. Kitchen
Anger Kills Himself
& other poems
Jim Pascual Agustin
The Man Who Wished
He Was Lego
& other poems
Jessica M. Lockhart
Scylla of the Alabama
& other poems
James P. Leveque
Three Films of Jean Painlevé
& other poems
Kelsey Charles
Autobiography
& other poems
Therese L. Broderick
Polly
& other poems
Lane Falcon
Touch
& other poems
Ricky Ray
The Bird
& other poems
Phoebe Reeves
Every Petal
& other poems
David Livingstone Fore
Eternity is a very long time...
& other poems
Tim Hawkins
Northern Idyll
& other poems
Abigail F. Taylor
On the Pillow Where You Lie
& other poems
Joey DeSantis
Baby Names
& other poems
Cameron Price
Every Morning
& other poems
David Walker
Sestina for Housesitting
& other poems
Helen R. Peterson
Ablaut
& other poems
The Bird
I
She looked over and saw a bird underneath a city tree,
its head sunken,
its body so still and low we thought it dead.
Then it struggled to lift its head and showed us:
one eye swollen, an inlaid marble,
the other swollen and crusted over,
the beak grotesque with infection.
It wobbled its head like five-hundred pounds,
shook as though a fault line were widening,
and it was.
Her heart leapt out of her and I felt it and mine followed.
Then I acted out of pain and frustration,
that sobering, sorrowful uselessness,
told her to get up, I wanted action, said
sitting there being sad was doing nothing to help it,
and that was true, or maybe it wasn’t,
but it was the wrong way to say it,
the wrong way to harness this energy
hovering over a life that was broken and breaking apart.
We carried our groceries upstairs,
called the rehab center and left a message.
Got down the cat carrier,
made a nest out of socks and an old T-shirt,
a nest we’d made before, and told the cats to be good.
II
Then we went down and she cupped it in her hands
and lowered it in, covered it, told me
how cold it felt, and bony: even less of a chance.
I found hand warmers in our emergency kit,
shook them and placed them over its wings.
She filled a tea cup with water
and dripped drops along its beak.
We couldn’t tell if it swallowed,
tried to decide what to do,
turned to the internet for help.
It didn’t offer much.
Then I heard commotion in the cage,
saw it flapping and called her over.
Maybe the warmers were too hot,
or maybe it wanted freedom,
from here, from its body, from life, just—out.
She held it again, tried to shh its heart calm.
It settled for a moment.
Then it flapped harder,
flipped itself over, scrambled its claws in the air.
We saw the gash along its body, how wasted its flesh,
felt its inability to eat and she made the call.
I had no doubt in the right of her heart.
Something in me knew this was coming,
forefelt the tears in her eyes,
the dread in my limbs.
III
I found the sharpest, largest knife I could
and hid it along the arm of my sweater.
She asked if I was going to break its neck.
I shook my head, said I wasn’t confident
that would be as quick and painless as it seemed;
what I had in mind would be quicker and sure.
She asked if she could carry it to the roof,
and I said yes, picked up a plastic bag for after.
Then she asked if she could help,
and I said no, wanted to spare her that,
and she didn’t protest or ask again,
walked to the other side of the roof and cried.
IV
I held it down on a flat rock,
its head drooping on that mangled neck,
felt the strength in its muscle
as I pinned it down
—so faint—
pressed the blade gently but steadily into its throat,
its beautiful, purple-green, grey feathered throat,
and sliced,
quick and hard,
in one swift stroke
severing spine and head
and leading its blood toward the light.
God, how that headless body writhed,
bucked for minutes against
the stillness that called it out of this world,
or down through its seams
into the underbelly of existence,
and no wonder it shook:
all that energy leaving the body at once.
I walked over and hugged her then,
saw her wet, red, swollen eyes
and felt pangs I have no words for.
V
I asked her to get napkins
and two more plastic bags
to clean up what I’d done.
She did.
I cleaned, kept the head with the body and wrapped it in white.
She saw the knife on the way down and knew.
We placed it in the freezer,
with the others we’d found on our walks through the city,
so many avian deaths dotting the sidewalks.
We’d bury them soon,
before winter and its hardening
made the ground and the task even more . . . more what?
I don’t know.
But she thanked me then, and that—that I understood.
VI
Later that day,
she said a good man
is better than a great one.
I know what she means.
And when she says it,
I believe her.
She said her heart felt better, lighter,
at ease in the release—its,
the relief—ours.
VII
I went up there the next morning
to check the spot:
all that was left was an already fading,
poorly wiped-up pool of blood.
That, and something I couldn’t name,
something that passes between us in times like these,
something that made my whole body tingle with affection
when I went back down and watched her sleep.
Something that stirs deep in this being,
deep where we are no longer merely human,
spreads its wings and flies with me,
flies through me now here to you.
IIX
Is this sufficient?
Have I made the life of the bird
and our involvement in it an honored thing?
Is this good enough to put down the pen,
bow my head to life and its ways
and let nature carry on?
I don’t know, but it feels good enough
to sleep on, and at the moment,
that’s good enough for me.
IX
Goodnight,
dear bird,
I’ll say hello
to your fellows
in the morning.
X
And thanks, world,
for whatever it is
I received today—
I don’t need
to know its name.
Chopping Wood
I liked going out in the rain,
so much rain in that land
of green hills, evergreens
and infections of the lung,
liked stepping through
puddles in my once
water-resistant boots
as I made my way
to the woodshed where
I’d pull the rusty light-cord,
check for spider webs,
then eye the piles,
one of oak, several of fir,
and pick the next ashes
for our old-fashioned,
wood-burning stove.
Then I’d carry the logs
to the chopping block
and drop them, not carelessly,
but less concerned with
the way they’d lie
than the way they fell,
and wonder about
the woodsman who felled them,
how he’d ponder
bringing them down
from the sky
and selling them
by the cord, whether
the land was his
or he bought them,
walking through
and showing which,
splashing paint
on the bark
to remember.
Then I’d pick up the logs,
heft the weight
of wood in my hand
and place them on the block,
this time with care
so they wouldn’t fall
and would offer me
their broadest face
to swing my favorite
axe down into.
And then I’d begin
the work that took me
out in the rain in joy,
I’d measure my paces
back from the block,
a two-hundred fir
by my quick reckoning,
I’d lower my hands
along the shaft,
send the heavy head
along its arc
and throw some
muscle into the slice.
And if the wood
was placed right
and the swing
was hard enough,
if hand and eye, mind
and muscle came together
in perfect concert,
the wood would split,
the blade would embed
ever so slightly
in the face of the block,
and I’d place my sole
on the edge of that old fir,
I’d firm my grip on the handle
and use the leverage
of my body
to bring
the axe-glint
back into the light.
And if any of those
things was off, the axe
would get stuck
in the little log, and I’d
lift it, axe and all, over my head
and come crashing down
until it split, or the blade would
stick in the block
deeper than I’d intended
and I’d have to tease it
side to side while
I tried to coax it out.
An hour’s rain later,
out it would come,
the wood would be split
and I’d pile it in my arms,
careful of splinters,
then carry it in
to warm the bodies,
the lives of my
wife and children.
Once, I missed the log
and the block entirely
and the blade
glanced off my shin,
but made no damage,
no cut, not even a bruise,
and I thought of how
easily the bone
would have splintered,
I felt pain at
the thought of
being a tree
subject to the woodsman’s
expertise, the loss of shade
that was respite
to so many creatures,
the nests
that may have been woven
high up
in the swaying branches,
the resting spots
for migrants, playgrounds
for squirrels, the haunts
for owls whose screeches
scorched us in our beds,
the cats alert with God
only knows in their ears.
And I thought of the grave
I dug on that property,
larger than a man’s grave,
the size of a woman
and child I thought
as I dug through dirt
into grey clay
that didn’t want to be dug,
the mother llama looking on
and moaning low
as her child’s body
decomposed under the tarp.
Then I stepped
out of the rain
onto the doorstep,
opened the door
and saw those
dear faces,
and was glad all that
thinking and chopping
was behind me.
Ricky Ray
was born in Florida and educated at Columbia University. A non-dualist, he was once a garbage man, a functional bum, and a record label owner. In 2013, he received the Ron McFarland Poetry Prize, second-prize in the Whisper River Poetry Contest, and was a runner-up in the Georgetown Review Magazine Contest. He lives in NYC with his wife and three cats, where they dream of farm life in an undiscovered village.