Fledgling
By Christine Poreba
A tiny bird appears at the hole of his house, as a waxing crescent moon appears at its appointed hour. We in the human house behind have witnessed his parents prepare for this arrival flying in, flying out. And now this singular eye as it first sees the dark become green become sky through the hole my son helped his father carve. Today he wrote his first set of recognizable words: Mama Love. The letters sweep in erratic flight across the page, their lines intersect like leaves. We heard his baby sounds at night become vowels become letters sung out of the order of their alphabet, become questions made of words strung together in a line like a trapeze. This bird will begin to answer the question tugging at its wing when we are not watching the door, a round opening with nothing to close.
Christine Poreba is a New Yorker who lived for more than a decade in North Florida and now lives in Chicagoland. Her book, Rough Knowledge, won the Philip Levine Prize and her manuscript, This Eye is for Seeing Stars, won the 2023 Orison Poetry Prize and will be published in 2025. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies and numerous journals, including Barrow Street, The Southern Review, Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, and The Sun.
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11/7 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Vandana Khanna + local writer Nicole Callihan / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:00 pm EST / Free
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