by Amanda McLeod
Stay at Home
The door is not barrier but mountain.
Aspen trees sing in the wind.
Wildflowers crowd the living room.
Lupine spreads and spills onto the kitchen floor.
Grasses erupt from couch cushions,
send their seedy ribbons up the walls.
Housecat becomes marmot, scratches
its golden haunches in the floor lamp sun.
The furnace is a rumble of far off thunder.
Warm air rushes across the carpet-ground.
On your back, if you stare at it long enough,
the ceiling morphs into a span of cloud.
Out the window, a mother elk and calf
pedal down the meadow-quiet street.
Iteration
after the Aldabra rail
One flightless bird evolves twice, before and after extinction.
Collective bodies remember what it is to feel safe.
You remember this, too. Before the world came lapping.
A coral atoll—lagoon brimming with black-tipped sharks,
no people—flourishes. Giant tortoises wander between
turquoise worlds of sea and sky. The birds have no
reason to fly away. A body with no enemies simplifies.
There was a time when you didn’t need wings.
Nothing is wasted. The birds push their long, ruddy necks
through the coastal grass. Nothing chases them down.
There was a time when you never looked behind you.
The first time the ocean takes the island, every species on it
goes extinct. A mass drowning. Thousands of years later,
the water recedes. Fossils and sand surface; flora blooms.
The bird’s white-throated cousins land on the shores.
There was a time when your throat was open to the sky.
The bird evolves again. Again relinquishes its wings.
Again has no enemies. Again is a singular kind of being.
You can do this, too. Sharks circle but can’t cross land.
Bodies remold. Bodies wingless. Bones tell stories. Versions
of stories. You recolonize your body. What it is to survive.
Brittney Corrigan was raised in Colorado but has called Portland, Oregon her home since 1990. She holds a degree from Reed College, where she is also employed. Brittney’s poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and she is the author of the collection Navigation (The Habit of Rainy Nights Press) and the chapbook 40 Weeks (Finishing Line Press). Her newest collection, Daughters, a series of persona poems in the voices of daughters of various characters from folklore, mythology, and popular culture, is forthcoming from Airlie Press in 2021. For more information, visit Brittney’s website: http://brittneycorrigan.com/.
Amanda McLeod is an Australian author and artist, with a penchant for wild places and quiet. Her work has appeared in many places both in print and online, and she received a 2019 Pushcart Prize nomination from Ellipsis Zine. Her work has been shortlisted in several writing prizes, and won the 2018 Marjorie Graber-McInnis Short Story Award. She is Managing Editor of Animal Heart Press.