by Olivia Mettler
My sisters and
I are chickens waiting for
grain at our father’s manure licked
feet. Starving—afraid to live life clamped
in labor’s jaw. My lips turn beak when I speak
like my father; unsure of what’s made to be shared.
He forgets his children when mouths don’t break open
for food. He’s 53 now or has turned back to a boy who
shoots barn swallows. He told me he ate an ostrich; sick
and large and one of three. I was too young or unborn
to watch my father grip every feather to get to healthy
bones; to remember how resourceful he can make
death be. I skin myself featherless like a sick
ostrich when he visits to prove I
haven’t stopped living
off birds.
Olivia Mettler is a poet from Minnesota. She spends her time pretending she can talk to birds and wandering the cemeteries of Atlanta.