< Issue 4 >
A Mass Murderer’s Intimacy
by Jennifer Bradpiece
Eight years old walking the damp trail home,
I came upon a downed sparrow with a mute wing.
Scooping it up, I ran my thumb and index finger
along the slick chest feathers, the soft down
beneath. I held the limp wing open,
lost in its minute span.
The delicacy of the tiny bones
lit up cities inside me.
My closed eyelids still repeat
the concave impression in the dirt
where I lifted him, bent and broken
from the ground.
His eye spun to meet mine and dilated me
out of focus, as if I was a dream
he hallucinated when he fell--
from the branch, from the blank grey sky.
You have to hold something that close to know it.
When I cupped my other hand
over the head, closed my fingers around
the clenched beak, I knew myself at once
crowned sovereign of all things
that crawl, that fall, that cry out.
My coronation, the snap when the muscles
in my hand twisted the skull.
No one will know a bird as I knew that bird.
No one will know their destiny as mine
was revealed in the last breath of a moment built
within that bone city, the chapel walls of my
palm holding the air as an unanswered prayer.
The lion knows her prey where the skin
of her muzzle drapes
gently around the throat,
knows the instant the heart beat ceases
to vibrate through her whiskers, holds it that close.
A Mass Murderer’s Intimacy
by Jennifer Bradpiece
Eight years old walking the damp trail home,
I came upon a downed sparrow with a mute wing.
Scooping it up, I ran my thumb and index finger
along the slick chest feathers, the soft down
beneath. I held the limp wing open,
lost in its minute span.
The delicacy of the tiny bones
lit up cities inside me.
My closed eyelids still repeat
the concave impression in the dirt
where I lifted him, bent and broken
from the ground.
His eye spun to meet mine and dilated me
out of focus, as if I was a dream
he hallucinated when he fell--
from the branch, from the blank grey sky.
You have to hold something that close to know it.
When I cupped my other hand
over the head, closed my fingers around
the clenched beak, I knew myself at once
crowned sovereign of all things
that crawl, that fall, that cry out.
My coronation, the snap when the muscles
in my hand twisted the skull.
No one will know a bird as I knew that bird.
No one will know their destiny as mine
was revealed in the last breath of a moment built
within that bone city, the chapel walls of my
palm holding the air as an unanswered prayer.
The lion knows her prey where the skin
of her muzzle drapes
gently around the throat,
knows the instant the heart beat ceases
to vibrate through her whiskers, holds it that close.
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