diffuse a colony by default, because our trees were limited.
we are not this residence yet, but should be.
magpied twice as often minus abundance,
these ages openly passerine. accidental,
a perimeter. as sentries stash circumstance.
crow folk, of course, and adaptation
to everywhere even. recognize reflections, yes, visions
of ourselves avian, but unable anyways
to let longer tales catch on. cross the neighbor country
no one means to begrudge but does, magpie.

fly three to four weeks after hatching. mercy.

grown, they aren’t picky with food but hoard
scattered caches carefully. the sown ground.
plus tuck bills beneath feathers for later
roosting, though my tree was lonely. and yours.
that scavenged pocket watch keeping
calendars tidy, unturned. disturbed eggs
cross-country too many miles to defend
too often irreconcilable predations.

y madrone currently lives and works in Chicago, IL via Olympia, WA via Detroit, MI via Baku, Ahzerbaijan. Other work can be found or is forthcoming in The National Poetry Review, RHINO, American Letters & Commentary, Columbia Poetry Review, Cloudbank & So to Speak.

I must unlatch this cold
constellation of two fish

as for me these kinds of dreams
for his way to moose I am armed

with my whistle but this is only a backstory
three more cities will loom

for these chapters and unspent ones
this is how hope is

always spoken beforehand
I am warned and I am ready

that neptune has been
to all our houses these nameable places

a pirate can say so o larch
a decade can be talked over or forgotten

but irregular saturn came once and went
will be back twice more, I am sure

this isn’t a final statement but the scope
of becoming a man some day

y madrone currently lives and works in Chicago, IL via Olympia, WA via Detroit, MI via Baku, Ahzerbaijan. Other work can be found or is forthcoming in The National Poetry Review, RHINO, American Letters & Commentary, Columbia Poetry Review, Cloudbank & So to Speak.

The chlorophyll remains in leaf:  the limbs
retain their hair:  the trees do not believe
the sun will set on them.  They think the film
of heat is normal—that it will revive
their energies.  Their organelles deceive
them.  Arctic air is coming:  the frigid winds
decelerate, creep at angles, cleave
the weeks—abnormal patterns bend
cuticle and xylem.  The curl of fronds
should soon commence, for their own sake:
precipitation turns crystal at end
of month:  the sappy network may soon break
beneath the neck of snow.  The season, white
and brittle, may betray the strange sunlight.

Janann Dawkins’ work has appeared in publications such as Existere & Ouroboros Review and soon features in The Flea, Two Review & Blue Fifth Review, among others. In 2008, Leadfoot Press published her chapbook Micropleasure. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she manages the eclectic journal Third Wednesday in Ann Arbor, MI.