Valerie Hammond, Sarah Pritchard, Taylor Franson-Thiel

OLD BIRDS

Sarah Pritchard

Archaeopteryx

I wonder if it is the old birds

That chase the flock in flight

That don't quite fit easily into the

great V of the migrating wild geese.

Avialae

I walk among puddles of feathers caught by cats and foxes

See them fly into the wind and land on a shoulder

Reminding grieving ones of their lost one.

Confuciusornis

I watch the dead seagull a way from the sea, in the woods

Feed the rodents, vixen and magpie before

I can remove its skull

to honour it on my blue witch apothecary sh-shelf.

Anchiornis

The old guillemot is stationary by the surf.

I put her in a box a distance sheltered by the breakwater

and later see her cardboard boat floating.

Still alive I drive her home

She is dead on arrival.

I bury her in the dunes of Llandonna beach by the red life guard float.

Xiaotingia

I come down to the kitchen to two clawless birds

Wiggling on my kitchen floor.

My eyes dagger The murdering cat.

Must I finish this?

Aurornis

I catch sight of a corvid

Hanging dead upside down in the maple

on the golf course.

I imagine my feathers no longer keeping me warm

My barky claws locked on the taloned, scarred old branch

I close my eyes & fall backwards

A young girl again.

EXTINCTION

Taylor Franson-Thiel

Every cell in my body

is a claw and getting

older is just grabbing

at new ways

to be useless. I grew up

in the same part of the country

where t-rex’s once reigned.

A monastery of pirouetting

carnage that only got tougher

with age. Holy in the way

tyrant kings are holy, sipping

at the marrow of weaker bodies.

I am now that weaker body.

My name now is a word that means

something softer than boring.

As a kid I’d spell it backward

and thought it looked like royal.

Thought that made me special.

Thought it meant I could weather

the asteroid rains like a killer.

Hard and uncraterable.

Now all I can do is cry myself migraines

and fill my many cavities

with the salt.

ART HARPY by VALERIE HAMMOND

Valerie Hammond maintains a fluid artistic practice, distinguishable for her organic approach and deft interaction with different mediums. In all of her work, there is play between the material and the immaterial, the physical and the spiritual: the dichotomy between what is seen and the sensation it provokes. Valerie’s work can be found in both private and public collections such as the Walker Art Center, the Library of Congress, The Fine Arts Museum Houston, The Progressive Art Collection, the Fidelity Collection, the New York Public Library’s print and drawing collection, The Chazen Museum, The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, The Grand Palais Museum, Paris and the Getty Museum. She is a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, and has exhibited in solo and group shows nationally and internationally.

Sarah Pritchard walks in the wild with her lurcher children and sometimes her cat. She works with vulnerable people helping them to get in touch with their creativity.

Taylor Franson-Thiel is a Pushcart-nominated poet from Utah, now based in Fairfax, Virginia. She received her Master’s in creative writing from Utah State University and is pursuing an MFA at George Mason University. She enjoys lifting heavy weights and posting reviews to Goodreads like someone is actually reading them.