The Birds

Redbirds: chaotic pulse-quickeners, Cardinals, like the juiciest of sins that are best recounted later, in the dark, when nobody is looking. What do they know that I don’t? Geese: loud…

We lived in a house of owls their planetary eyes tracking my childhood years; sentinels, strangely silent, always still. One in particular, the long-eared eagle – Bubo bubo – haunted…

The questions I would have asked you when I was 10, after you passed away: Why did you choose a Canadian baseball team to support? Why did you buy their…

My grandmother died the day I went to the dentist. My dad called me right as I was putting on some coffee. In three days, I was sitting in an…

An owl lives in the sweet gum, and tonight it has flown to our rooftop. Its calls float down to me—low and hollow—like curls of carrot peels around a bowl.…

1st Section/ Voice A/Poem 4 Title: Waiting for a new bird to arrive “Waiting for a New Bird to Arrive” is Fragment 4/1st Section/ Voice A of a larger work…

* * * the virus rested like dew on the grass but they still came back arrogant, red-breasted thin and then fat, as if they didn’t know better spotting the…

Victor Savic tugged the chain of his bedside lamp. Another ring. “Get it,” his wife mumbled. Victor swung his legs out from under the covers. The floor was cold. He…

Julien’s head tilted back, tufts of blond hair bolting out from under his hat, he points and yells, burr. There’s a pair—the slender, lemon-bellied flycatchers.   Che che jey jey…

The first time I ever saw an owl outside a book or a screen was when I visited Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary in Rajasthan, India in November 2016. Having spent a…

I am thinking about birds a lot. I come from a “bird family.” While my mother has owned fish, mice, hamsters, a goat, turtles and dogs—for many years her best…

The family lore is repeated over and over. It becomes so familiar memory mixes with imagination to fill in the spaces. My sister, Maria, loved too much. Here lies Mr.…

People were curious and wanted to see something rare—a great black hawk from Mexico with legs so long that it hunted squirrels by running them down. Bird lovers drove in…

My dad was not the type to buy an animal on impulse. When I was in elementary school, his companion, which he dutifully let out to pee at increasingly narrow…