After We Watch The Girl, There are Birds and Bones Flying Everywhere When Supervising Middle Schoolers at Lunchtime
Pigeon is dead.
Pigeon is dead.
Stays dead despite
their stares, disbelief even
(the quivering fascination)
as it un-flies from a window
restitches during recess, squawking
out which children know
death & which are discovering it
(& which find it no more or less
interesting than a soccer ball).
They push & pull
a soul into a body, transfixed eye
–balls taut like pulled cords. Or
how the grotesque is a mirror
cracking open
reflection of their own bones,
they’d always wished were hollow
so they could reach the sky
Matthew Isaac Sobin's (he/him) first book was the science fiction novella, The Last Machine in the Solar System. His poems are in or forthcoming from The Lumiere Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Midway Journal, Orange Blossom Review, Hearth & Coffin, Ghost City Review, MAYDAY Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, and The Hooghly Review. He received an MFA from California College of the Arts. You may find him selling books at Books on B in Hayward, California.
