| No, you are |
The egg Lilly had to carry for Health Class last year |
When Sophia laughed Dr. Pepper out her nose |
What’s the bird the other birds hate? |
Bird school, bird parents, bird boys, bird hair, bird hips |
| Shit on Dad’s bike helmet |
When Lilly and Sophia got high and made Tweet jokes and flapped their arms |
11th grade’s a prison |
Owl silhouette on the sliding glass door |
The dead bird Lilly kept in the Forever 21 shopping bag |
| Sophia won’t get the dodo tattoo too |
Lilly wants hollow bones |
Love, love, the flock and swoop at dusk above the strip mall |
What’s it called if you don’t eat birds? |
Horny-thol- ogy, hahaha |
| Is it better to have been a bird in a previous life… |
It’s just a thing, so shut-up |
Shocker: birds smell |
What’s Sophia’s problem? |
Dreams are birds |
| At Lew’s party, Lilly Sharpies feathers on her arms |
Pecking = boring |
Sophie’s beady bird eyes when she’s mad |
… or to be a bird in the next life? |
 |
Alan Michael Parker is the author of four novels and eight books of poetry. His awards include the Balch Prize, the Fineline Prize, the Medwick Award, the NC Book Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and two inclusions in Best American Poetry. In 2021, he judged the National Book Award in Fiction; he’s currently judging the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction. He holds the Houchens Chair in English at Davidson College.
Header photo by COULANGES, courtesy Shutterstock.
