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Kathleen Radigan
Immanuel, Arkansas
On the news they’re saying “what causes two thousand
birds to fall from the sky?”
interviews with witnesses, baldheaded, southern-tongued, who,
in the tunnel from the doorstep to the mailbox slipped over black corpses
with slipper feet. Feather beds and ivy. If we could ask the birds
in an on-camera expose they might say
What causes two thousand humans to fall out of love? Spill from front doors
in the morning, untangled from sheets and lovers
They couldn’t just hit the wire. You know how much I love you.
How wide stretches the sky. If we could ask the birds
maybe they’d say The Sky Was Too Small
the love suctioned, built up in lungs and outweighed us all.
What causes feathery descent? The fish too are turning up
dead in the water. The check-out girl lifts her scanner, the splinter
splits the finger. Kisses sew then split apart the stitches. Stars cycle through.
This is for the birds.
For the homeless man who went to school to speak like a radio king
how high he had to fly and how sudden the plunge. He says
radio is a fine theatre of mind, and theatre of mind’s all I got
“Watch family guy. Friday night on Fox 28,” he calls onto an empty corner
trash can jungle, fish smell rankling
This is for the birds, for the lovers and ex lovers
feathered speechless in the brown grass:
I hope you scatter and fly north for a change.
©2011 by Kathleen Radigan
Kathleen Radigan is a high school student currently residing in Rhode Island.
Her work can also be found in the Newport Review, Circuit Circuits magazine, Innisfree poetry,
and Obisidian Eagle.
She wishes she had enough time to start up a stamp collection, but alas, writing fills that void.
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