Flirting with February
Heavy beaked bird
in the denuded trees.
He flashed his frilly pantaloons
and if this were a bar
I might have lowered my lids to him,
licked a finger and dragged it
through the condensation
left by the beers we killed.
Instead he soared
over the slate grey roof ridge,
leaving my afternoon empty
and full of February.
An Infestation of Mice in a Capitol Hill Townhouse
DC, you block
of cheese, the mice
have gotten to you
and nibbled at your side.
Your laws
lack symmetry
and your people sleep
with the pea of inequality
unsettling their dreams; they sleep
like people who hear rustling,
a whisper, like a mouse
in the kitchen downstairs.
Hannah Fischer is a librarian and nature enthusiast in Washington, D.C. She publishes the wildlife newsletter, WanderFinder, on a bi-weekly-ish basis, and works of hers have appeared in Shenandoah Literary Magazine, Joyland Magazine, and Calyx. She likes clapping on the down beat, and her views are hers alone.
Image: Marton Berntsen, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
