Meg Cowen
With Respect for the Boy's Last Good Easter
It is almost seven and Grandfather rocks
through the last of the rabbit hour,
his laughing coated in sympathy and bacon
fat. Who will be here to catch the drippings?
Not Father, he is at the hospital with
Mother, who is about to crack open.
What's understood is this:
Two have gone. Three will come back.
And one is left home to sweep the grass
for malted robin eggs that push up
from the ground (on this day only),
gently, chalked like cuttlebone.
The word "brother" means anything.
Something that sticks to the upholstery.
Something to drag into the sunlight
until it dries up. Something orange
and splitting from a plastic egg.
Not a he, but a thing. A formless
ink blot dripping out fingers
faster than can be contained. Four.
Now, five of them. This reckoning will
never be still. Duck down, those little stalks
of run-off are curling under into fists.
And already, they're flying.
The Woodsman and I Fight on a Train to Ohio
Unclothed, you stretch, fold your wishbone
to the window—arms angled like turbines, legs
ready to leap over the tracks and bramble, skull
pushing out bone and protein in forks.
All your muscles are beveled like blades.
How thick the air feels in a small space.
You’re hunting with pointed fingers, pushing
my weight to the upper bunk where I cannot be
your quick-fingered gatherer, collecting truffles
that bloom on the path of your spine. Pockets
of snow are ghosting between penitent trees.
You say you wish you could thaw just about anything.
Do it for me, now, as we fall back with the hour.
I see your patience carried away in a crow’s beak.
The remaining miles bob between your fingers
like dabbling ducks. Your body aligns with the frame,
salt-whipped;
head full of insults
and osprey.
The Falconer’s Wife
He said the word peregrinus tasted of candied oranges,
and that’s why he got her, this coal-feathered
falcon-gentle with eyes like filtered honey.
How she balances on suede gloves―
talons circle his wrist with a single vow:
I shalt honor and obey.
She would gather starling and snow hare,
for this man who fed her lamb, port-hued strips
of veal; fitted her ankles with the softest leather jesses
while my tether—his vinegar tongue—cuts against
the grain of patience; binds borrowed affection.
My cranberry chutney cannot fight this battle. I am
her black-eyed prey, betrayed by language.
Whether it rolls from a scarred lip or ashen beak;
whether it comes in sighs or caw, kah, click,
she waits to swallow up my iridescent
body and circle back to his outpost
―sight unseen; rook captured.
Meg Cowen's chapbook, When Surrounded By Fire, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She recently received the Elizabeth Curry Prize and has poetry and short fiction appearing/forthcoming in The Pinch, Gargoyle, Louisiana Literature, burntdistrict and Barely South. She edits Noctua Review.
Return to January 2013 Edition
It is almost seven and Grandfather rocks
through the last of the rabbit hour,
his laughing coated in sympathy and bacon
fat. Who will be here to catch the drippings?
Not Father, he is at the hospital with
Mother, who is about to crack open.
What's understood is this:
Two have gone. Three will come back.
And one is left home to sweep the grass
for malted robin eggs that push up
from the ground (on this day only),
gently, chalked like cuttlebone.
The word "brother" means anything.
Something that sticks to the upholstery.
Something to drag into the sunlight
until it dries up. Something orange
and splitting from a plastic egg.
Not a he, but a thing. A formless
ink blot dripping out fingers
faster than can be contained. Four.
Now, five of them. This reckoning will
never be still. Duck down, those little stalks
of run-off are curling under into fists.
And already, they're flying.
The Woodsman and I Fight on a Train to Ohio
Unclothed, you stretch, fold your wishbone
to the window—arms angled like turbines, legs
ready to leap over the tracks and bramble, skull
pushing out bone and protein in forks.
All your muscles are beveled like blades.
How thick the air feels in a small space.
You’re hunting with pointed fingers, pushing
my weight to the upper bunk where I cannot be
your quick-fingered gatherer, collecting truffles
that bloom on the path of your spine. Pockets
of snow are ghosting between penitent trees.
You say you wish you could thaw just about anything.
Do it for me, now, as we fall back with the hour.
I see your patience carried away in a crow’s beak.
The remaining miles bob between your fingers
like dabbling ducks. Your body aligns with the frame,
salt-whipped;
head full of insults
and osprey.
The Falconer’s Wife
He said the word peregrinus tasted of candied oranges,
and that’s why he got her, this coal-feathered
falcon-gentle with eyes like filtered honey.
How she balances on suede gloves―
talons circle his wrist with a single vow:
I shalt honor and obey.
She would gather starling and snow hare,
for this man who fed her lamb, port-hued strips
of veal; fitted her ankles with the softest leather jesses
while my tether—his vinegar tongue—cuts against
the grain of patience; binds borrowed affection.
My cranberry chutney cannot fight this battle. I am
her black-eyed prey, betrayed by language.
Whether it rolls from a scarred lip or ashen beak;
whether it comes in sighs or caw, kah, click,
she waits to swallow up my iridescent
body and circle back to his outpost
―sight unseen; rook captured.
Meg Cowen's chapbook, When Surrounded By Fire, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. She recently received the Elizabeth Curry Prize and has poetry and short fiction appearing/forthcoming in The Pinch, Gargoyle, Louisiana Literature, burntdistrict and Barely South. She edits Noctua Review.
Return to January 2013 Edition