Slammed like bracken
matchsticked and rendered
back to bones of wood.
Torn shingles hang
like oak leaves from
a ground floor roof.
Glean denuded floors
in sunlight. Bearing now
lone chimney. That proud
obelisk to what he never
needed, but still he held
them. Proof of prior warmth
between splayed rafters.
From this found wreckage
he brought you a hummingbird’s nest,
neatly woven.
(Inspired by Kerry Webster’s We Do Not Eat Our Hearts Alone and Pascal Petit’s The Hummingbird’s Nest, as workshopped with Paige Ackerson-Kiely.)
Header photograph © Caroline Bardwell.
Peter H. Michaels wrote a poetry book review of Erin Hoover’s Barnburner that was published on PANK magazine’s blog. He was also the 2018 winner of the Burt Dall Fixed Form Poetry Contest at Anne Arundel Community College where he studied creative writing.
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