Patrick Kindig
Ode
after Ross Gay
Friends, there is no other way to say it: this morning
as I walked to campus to meet with a student, my tongue
heavy and my face swollen, I glanced
at the building across the street and saw on its roof
a cross on which were perched a handful of grey birds
and a stark white one, all pigeons, all preening
in the sun and shuffling one inch to the left, one inch
to the right, six uncolored pairs of wings and one pair
albino, yes, albino, and I hate to use this ungraceful phrase,
albino pigeon, a thing you might be forgiven
for calling from a distance a dove, some
symbol of redemption after a weekend
of sliding back into what, if I am being
honest, must be called alcoholism, though
this metaphor, this metamorphosis from pigeon
to dove somehow lessens the bird’s strangeness
and thereby its serendipity, the way this morning
it guttered and flashed beside the unremarkable bodies
of its neighbors, all lifting, all looping
through the air above the First United Methodist
Church, all settling after some time
on the telephone wire across the street, unworried
and waiting for the next blue wind
to carry them into the air above the city.
Patrick Kindig is a dual MFA/PhD candidate at Indiana University. His micro-chapbook, Dry Spell, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press, and his poems have recently appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Court Green, Willow Springs, Fugue, and elsewhere.
Return to July 2016 Edition
after Ross Gay
Friends, there is no other way to say it: this morning
as I walked to campus to meet with a student, my tongue
heavy and my face swollen, I glanced
at the building across the street and saw on its roof
a cross on which were perched a handful of grey birds
and a stark white one, all pigeons, all preening
in the sun and shuffling one inch to the left, one inch
to the right, six uncolored pairs of wings and one pair
albino, yes, albino, and I hate to use this ungraceful phrase,
albino pigeon, a thing you might be forgiven
for calling from a distance a dove, some
symbol of redemption after a weekend
of sliding back into what, if I am being
honest, must be called alcoholism, though
this metaphor, this metamorphosis from pigeon
to dove somehow lessens the bird’s strangeness
and thereby its serendipity, the way this morning
it guttered and flashed beside the unremarkable bodies
of its neighbors, all lifting, all looping
through the air above the First United Methodist
Church, all settling after some time
on the telephone wire across the street, unworried
and waiting for the next blue wind
to carry them into the air above the city.
Patrick Kindig is a dual MFA/PhD candidate at Indiana University. His micro-chapbook, Dry Spell, is forthcoming from Porkbelly Press, and his poems have recently appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Court Green, Willow Springs, Fugue, and elsewhere.
Return to July 2016 Edition