by Joshua Horan
The Window
My desk bows low to accept the blessing of late afternoon. The high yellow ceilings a temple to the
sun, the cat in the rhombus of light a spirit guide.
Mine, mine, mine. There’s a hole in my bag of flour and I leave a fine cloud of dust in my wake, and I
can never, never stay filled to the top.
No, a winter’s sleep is not a grain’s death.
I never was much of a stargazer, the window in that place I was trapped taken up with my reflection
and the burn of the streetlight.
Once, I taped a note, facing out, for only the driveway to see. “Yes I am.”
When the sun falls below the treeline, my room is still warm and yellow. The cat is still flicking his tail
across the keyboard.
I can be a small creature of joy or a fractaling of over-treaded paths, but at some point, I always
recognize that I have been there before.
Tonight, when the stars come out, I will close the chickens’ coop windows and
kiss their complaining heads goodnight
with the headcount of my flashlight. I will pause under the wild
rose, still purple and mostly bare, and listen
for the owl ordering dinner. I will apologize to the thorns that catch on my
sleeve.
I am the observer in the driveway, looking up at the black ballpoint and
the fingerprint on the tape. The girl may
not recognize me, if she could see me at all
through the glare of her desk lamp, in profile with her ear pressed
to the speakers. But I am there
as assuredly as we are here, and I see her sign.
Yes, you are. You do. You live.
Animate
I never know what to do with the feathers
from the hens
the fox almost catches.
The bird taken leaves behind
a meteor strike
as she explodes from this world.
But the bird that gets free
sheds a trail of gratefulness
and panic.
She preens the near miss.
She must now go bare,
her rump reduced to semiplumes.
I scour the forsythia and the lilac
for buds above the circlet of feathers.
Too early, hard frosts overnight,
but I need hard proof
that we made it back alive
this time, too.
Jerica Taylor is a neurodivergent queer writer, birder, and chicken herder. They have an MFA from Emerson College and have had work appear in Luna Station Quarterly, Impossible Archetype and The Fabulist. She lives with her wife and young daughter in Western Massachusetts. Twitter @jericatruly, Instagram @floofhauben
Joshua Horan is a farmer and father living in rural Vermont. When not taking care of cows, his two wonderful boys Peter and Thomas, and his poet-wife Elisabeth Horan, he enjoys bird watching and taking nature photos. He is anti social media and impossible to find online.