The birds sound more human
than us tonight.
The street: a black snake squeezing
empty shops, a dark whiskey
no one drinks.
The trees look burned
with bird wings, murmuring back
and forth in starling.
A peacock in the park answers the wail
of police sirens. We say nothing.
On the news we saw
a child picked
like a cherry; spit out
like a stone
in a field. We saw a man
sliced in half
by hell on eighteen wheels, and another
blowing himself
up into pulp.
Now, cherry juice makes us think
of child’s blood, of men turned
inside out. We sink our thorns of thought
into pillows and outlaw talk.
The birds sound more human
than us tonight as they shiver the trees
for hours.
The street: a black snake squeezing
our hearts as we struggle
to fall back asleep.
Header photograph © K Weber.
Leah Callen is an emerging playwright and poet who graduated with a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria in 2015. Her poem Little Bugger was published last year in The Malahat Review and her poem Fallout was longlisted this year for the Vallum Award for Poetry.
Dang. This is powerful and bold.
Thank you for sharing and using your writing gift.