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Context
“Different musics respond to knocked-on silences” –Sarah Gridley
Outside air becomes glass when
Spring’s first red-wing
blackbird shudders its voice
into the chilled void—
the song to be lost
come July with its
humid white-noise
of crickets, honeybees
and cardinals.
My toddler’s
cry of no-no ping-pongs
off midnight bedroom
walls in small eruptions
of panicked confusion,
and just as I wake
enough to step from quilts,
I know already
nothing is there.
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About the Author, Kerry Trautman: I am a poetry editor for Red Fez, and my work has appeared in various anthologies and in journals, including The Fourth River, Gasconade Review, Midwestern Gothic, Paper & Ink, Third Wednesday, and Think Journal. My poetry books are, Things That Come in Boxes (Kingcraft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) and To Be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020.)
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Image Credit: Digital remixing of an illustration from A History of North American Birds. Boston :Little, Brown,1905. biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12887556. Creative Commons License 2.0.
As It Ought To Be 