Birdwolf is a new year-long project authored by the collective Entropy community. It is a collaborative online epic poem written by the Entropy community on a weekly basis. A different author will write the next stanza or section of the poem each week, to be posted every Tuesday, following the previous post from the previous week, and following a very limited set of guidelines (that each author has one week to write the next piece after the previous week’s installment goes up, that the installment should build from the previous section’s content and form, and that contributions should range between 8 and 24 lines or be a visual work).
Follow the entire epic poem here: Birdwolf.
The sixth installment is presented this week by Jessica Ceballos.
VI.
And then morning. And mourning.
At birth – begins the cataclysm.
Removing the feather from his wings,
we first place our hands – to replace his bones,
cupping the body to make a weave through his feathers.
This is how we memorialize the death of a father we never knew.
Ravens know that sometimes the wolves disappear,
their best companions go missing, and dogs aren’t always a women’s best friend.
It can be better to not have the means for a memory,
of a life well-lived together.
Rebirth – ends the cataclysm.
The apprehension of beginning again,
to lose everything after the tumbling onto into words
and silences like a beat and now broken drum.
This is how we know when we are found.
But death – This is when the wolf becomes bird.
The napping body has already been handled
while the family sings their rituals to remember,
or to not forget these bones and their howls.
I get it I get it I get it. I think, I get it.
But only sometimes.
And the other times, are when we know how to begin the mourning.
Jessica Ceballos is a writer, designer, cultural wanderer and community advocate, among other things. She is the curator of literary arts programming at Avenue 50 Studio which includes Poesia Para La Gente, a program that brings poetry to the communities of LA using non-traditional spaces as venues. She is 1/4 of Writ Large Press, a downtown LA-based small press, and she is on the Highland Park Neighborhood Council (her hometown), and chairs their Arts & Culture Committee. www.jessicaceballos.com
