16-17. / Sneak Peek 2

            (Columba Constellation – Dove)     Mother bird births baby and baby births her. Transformation becomes repression. I sought to free you by bottling up peace, wheeling you to wallpaper. So many new doves mashed flat. All around me urban birds, some collared, some crowned, some square-tailed. Cemented in place.

I’d finally gotten a handle on my morning when Michael White posted his story about me. It was as if the starter journalist had sensed that I was at last on track to make gains on my new book.

after Ilya Kaminsky   We lived north of the future where prey is a verb spoken by stock characters who misunderstood I can pray inside my body to a preening predator while covered with leaves from a vine of sophistry.

— Elizabeth Burk is a psychologist who divides her time between a practice and family in New York and a home and husband in southwest Louisiana. She is the author of three collections: Learning to Love Louisiana, Louisiana Purchase and Duet—Poet & Photographer, a collaboration with her photographer husband.

I am fixated on a man I never really knew. My husband and I used to call him Shuffles. He is an old stocky man, built like a block, a Lego figurine. He walks with his head bent forward, his eyes on the concrete in front of him, a cane in his right hand.