It’s a series of postures, executed just fast enough to trick the eye into seeing a single gesture. The uplifted palm, the stilled foot, elongated like the endless limbs of bronze burghers hemmed in by the museum courtyard. Chestnut leaves unzip in the pennyweight sun, coat riding boots and walking shoes in the pea-gravel. The local women narrow their eyes over tea and watch two children with book bags poke at a fallen nest made of steel wool and twigs, the abandoned home of mechanical birds, beaks opening to their mechanical caw. My knees sink down, creaking sheet metal; sing in unison.
M.J. Turner’s poems have appeared in Nixes Mate, Spillway, concīs, and the I-70 Review. She lives in Massachusetts.
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