on my pillow days before he died. I think about my father’s last day, that day when he really was gone. I saw his back relax, like a fist undone, because the muscles could weep in my father’s body as he laid in tired sheets. At that moment the Carolina Parakeet flew into the city because he was so iridescent as to be strange, a bird of that kind shouldn’t be in nature as it attracts too many enemies natural and unnatural. He never came back. It’s a wonder he’s no longer here, my father, and that the time ran out for him, and the parakeet too, but what if the law of extinction was ongoing, and what if the bones of extinction are the reality, what if the reality falls against feather running beauty enthralled and implied, gone and caged--why is the cage better than the feather, the lift and sway of the pinnate wings. The way you died in the hospice as quiet as a doused city. Things are gone in a way that makes it obvious: loss isn’t a process, but a black chasm we fight to keep from opening under us like a broken sidewalk.
Lynn Finger’s writings have appeared in 8Poems, Perhappened, Book of Matches, Fairy Piece, Drunk Monkeys, and ONE ART: a journal of poetry. Lynn also recently released a poetry chapbook, “The Truth of Blue Horses,” published by Alien Buddha Press. She was nominated for 2021 and 2022 Best of the Net Anthology. Lynn edits Harpy Hybrid Review and works with a group that mentors writers in prison. Her Twitter is @sweetfirefly2.
Rough Diamond Poetry 