Tag: birds

Through the Looking Glass | S.N. Rodriguez

~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment
Image: Tyler Jamieson Moulton
Through the Looking Glass

Land-starved and stubborn we pile 
windows on top of windows and climb 
so high everything looks small and distant.

Birds leap into the sky wide-eyed and unbound
and rocket themselves into cloud and blue-
stained glass stunned like butterflies 

in freefall spinning and spiraling through
the wind. I heard the thick thump against 
the double-pane and caught a mourning dove

as it fell solid as a blood-warm stone in my hands.
Its feathered imprint a chalk outline of wings
and beak left stamped against the looking glass.

Too often we see what we want to see until
it’s too late. I stick vinyl bird-shaped silhouettes 
on the reflective surface like dusted ghosts

and recite them as I rub them flat with a card
     sparrow,     dove,     cardinal,    blue jay, 
finch,     mockingbird,     grackle,     wren.

S. N. Rodriguez is a writer and photographer in Austin, Texas. She is a Writers’ League of Texas 2021 Fellow and her work has appeared in The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism, Blue Mesa Review, River Teeth, and elsewhere.

Breaking | Lucas Zulu

~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment
Image: Daniele Levis Pelusi

Breaking

For your curiosity sake
I wasn’t hatched a flightless korhaan
surely I was destined for the blue skies
like a bird of ancient thorn trees
Sorry, I can’t live in the cage of your fears
and still be fed your unfounded fears
or wait to be traumatized by your fears
Like a baby bird in the nest
muffled up in comfort
and sheathed in cozy feathers
shielded from trying hard
show me a partridge
that scratches for another
Slowly, I break out of this chrysalis
a butterfly daring to unfold its wings
like a red-crested bustard
plunging into the Kalahari red dunes
I rise above a dust storm
that swiftly dries up your wet courage  

Lucas Zulu is an award-winning poet, his poem has been published in many local and international literary journals. He lives in Kwa-Quqa, eMalahleni, Mpumalanga Province of South Africa.

Fog // David Dephy

~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment
Image: Nathan Anderson

Fog

BY DAVID DEPHY

Fog lies low over the land.
Rain drives soft across the fields.
Comatose landscape.

There is nothing immediate we can hope for,
now we have nothing to do but breathe,
until something better shows up.

We are holding each other,
expecting a miracle at dawn,
as if there were no one and nothing to hurt us.

Beginning in mid-May the nights draw in,
our look turns warm and soft,
the fog passes gently over us,

we’d like to ask the fog—
don’t talk to us, our heart’s been broken,
we can’t listen to you, we can’t see you,

but the fog covers us and says:
I never see myself either,
in my own mind I’m invisible,

that’s why you may feel I’m almighty,
you are like birds, your flight
begins and ends in silence,

you will find yourselves in each other only,
silence is garden, among the growing dreams
and precious wishes

you will discover each other again,
everything that will ever be discovered,
already exists in the mist.

David Dephy (he/him) (pronounced as “DAY-vid DE-fee”), is an American award-winning poet and novelist. The founder of Poetry Orchestra, a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee for Brownstone Poets, an author of full-length poetry collection Eastern Star (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2020), and A Double Meaning, also a full-length poetry collection with co-author Joshua Corwin, (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2022).  His poem, “A Sense of Purpose,” is going to the moon in 2024 by The Lunar Codex, NASA, Space X, and Poetry on Brick Street. He is named as Literature Luminary by Bowery Poetry, Stellar Poet by Voices of Poetry, Incomparable Poet by Statorec, Brilliant Grace by Headline Poetry & Press and Extremely Unique Poetic Voice by Cultural Daily. He lives and works in New York City.

The Nuthatches | Tricia Knoll

~ South Broadway Press ~ Leave a comment
Image: Nikita Nikitenko

The Nuthatches

BY TRICIA KNOLL

I pretend the red-breasted nuthatches
know what you might have said beneath
the plum tree last spring before your cell
phone rang and you took the call that said
your mother had only hours left
to live so you ran to your Subaru
and took off for Boston and left me
holding the thread of a message
that might have been only connection
and which I wanted to be love,
the kind of love that makes
swallows dive and nuthatches
hang upside down.

Now these little birds flit about
in winter’s snow, back and forth
above where we sat on a blue fleece
blanket, and they tweet what you haven’t,
that you miss me and will get back as soon
as you can. You have had the estate
to manage for your wayward sister
and her addictions which you feel
responsible for now that neither of you
have a parent, no one in the old house
to hold things together.

Your family tree snapped.
Your sister floated off like letters
let go into the wind. Invoices
you never intend to pay. The sketch
you made of me with my blouse
hanging off my shoulder
when the sun’s warmth gave me
hope that you felt the same
correspondence I do; we are meant
to be together. And my breast
was warm, wanting to be touched;
breast cancer took her. Maybe
your genes are faulty.

Those little birds continue our talk
in the crotch of the trees.
Bluejays push them away
from the feeder, but they return
all flibbertigibbet, so here
I’ve drawn a nuthatch
on a postcard and colored the breast pink
to say spring will come again and
I am still here for you, hearing
nuthatches tuck away what they need
for later.

Tricia Knoll is an aging poet living alone in the woods in Vermont on the unceded land of the Abenaki. Her work appears widely in journals and anthologies. Her recent collection Checkered Mates (Kelsay Books) focuses on relationships that work and those that don’t. Website: triciaknoll.com

Twitter: @triciaknollwind