Thrush Poetry Journal
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Kevin McLellan

Please Establish A View

Hours after bowing from too much 
heft the tulip snapped

at the stem. Laid up on the couch 
I half watch TV until

a limping deer’s downed by some 
wolves at a watering hole. 

A throat-breaking silence follows. 
I struggle to stand, 

totter to the kitchen and notice 
the sparkly get well cards 

from some dear friends. But I 
want my dad to call. 

He’s called twice in my life, when 
his mother passed 

and when mine needed unexpected 
surgery. I pour water. 

The sound is a glass of orange tulips 
I drink.





Kevin McLellan is the author of Tributary (Barrow Street), the chapbooks Round Trip (Seven Kitchens) and Shoes on a wire (Split Oak, forthcoming), and the book arts project [box] (Small Po[r[tions, forthcoming). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize, and his poems have appeared in many journals including: American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, Kenyon Review Online, Thrush Poetry Journal, West Branch, Western Humanities Review, Witness, and others. Kevin lives in Cambridge MA.





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