After We Watch The Girl, There are Birds and Bones Flying Everywhere When Supervising Middle Schoolers at Lunchtime

by Matthew Isaac Sobin


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.