...Melinda Wilson © 2014 Melinda Wilson 2014 Melinda Wilson Dance for Me You Six-Plumed Bird of Paradise So I take off even my socks, climb onto the countertop and mimic beauty like I’m not a bag stuffed with gizzard and bone. But it doesn’t feel right. In the...

...Timothy Kercher © 2011 Timothy Kercher 2011 Timothy Kercher The Birds and the Bees Shells have been found with holes, sparkly pigments indicating Neanderthals used to wear makeup. I don’t like my wife to wear any but makeup in this moment has serious meaning...

...Timothy Otte © 2015 Timothy Otte 2015 Timothy Otte When acting as a wave There is a giant curled in the belly of the earth, and another giant curled around the first. And in the heart of the inner giant are a man, a woman, and a small bird. The bird is in the hands of the woman. The woman...

.... And in the heart of the inner giant are a man, a woman, and a small bird. The bird is in the hands of the woman. The woman holds her hands out to the man. The woman asks if the bird in her hands is alive or dead. The man doesn’t know. The giants know and cannot say. The giants hope the man...

...Lauren J. Roberts © 2016 Lauren J. Roberts 2016 Lauren J. Roberts Report in Left Desk Drawer I whipped a bush with my jump rope, and all of the birds flew out to a tree. First day home. I’m asked to stop drinking. Dollhouse, meltwater sound from the heater, melt, my hand, the heater...

...Crystal S. Gibbins © 2016 Crystal S. Gibbins 2016 Crystal S. Gibbins Grass Dancer: A Prayer Prairie open in me where winter comes too early, freezes grass, freezes leaves, blows away birds, blows across rivers Prairie open in me where I’ve been...

... oceanic ancestors? In his room he submerged them in seawater until egg and snail survived these “long baths” —​ surmising that the lowly Helix pomatia must have been “transported to islands by adhering to the feet of birds or to driftwood.” My own devotion concerns...

...Julie Porter © 2009 the minnesota review 2009 107 Julie Porter At a Hunting and Camping Store A rack of silk thongs and teddies the color of woods, stands beside bird callers and bullets. I wonder why Seclusion Camouflage Sleepwear exists, how spaghetti...

...Paul Nemser © 2013 Paul Nemser 2013 Paul Nemser My Aunt Remembers Whose desire, Mama, drove a fiddle like a bird out of a thicket and across the sea, thinking only of beautiful claws? Papa, who made arks of baling wire and balsa and tied up the Yiddish books and...

... make noise, so these birds probably don’t use hearing to find food. But turkey vultures do minnesota review 80 (2013) DOI 10.1215/00265667-2016544  © 2013 Katie Fallon 4 Fallon  5 tend to roost together and feed together at carcasses; it...

... dives into the mountain, and this is the part where great tropical birds come flooding into the sky at the hour of the setting sun . . . . Love is like that —​ The cracked sidewalks, the supermarket aisles, product testing and market share. The elm trees dying in the city...

...Linda Lee Crosfield © 2007 the minnesota review 2007 14 the minnesota review Linda Lee Crosfield A Good Place to Start   Big old bird, pelican belly-beak stuffed with passengers who want want want and she’s in the galley...

... show you all of dead baby birds left behind in nests, show you prisons, tent cities, oil slicks big as heartland. Just give me chance, my darlink, and I will show you sometink you will really like. minnesota review 82 (2014) DOI 10.1215/00265667-2409838  © 2014 Nick Lantz...

...A. Minetta Gould © 2014 A. Minetta Gould 2014 A. Minetta Gould Poetics vol. 1 issue 3 I was not born with a hollow for the Lyric, I was made into this. I was made into judgment, into terror, into the bird’s bone, which I can’t even say in a poem anymore because I’m past an age and I’m...

... water. All women are a one in eight chance of breast cancer, the body a representation of risk, disease the message and the messenger. The body loves anger more than living. You wouldn’t ask birds to stop flocking like fish, like choreographed machinery. Listen to...

... wash is done everyone’s asking you to lift your dress they want to know which secret is the realest one & what getting away costs they call you a threat to every woman but women can’t decide who gets to be a woman who gets to breathe like a bird in the ear somebody’s dearest wish pretty or not...

... pointing at me with his dog paw and laughing. This goes on until all the trucks break down and the drivers and their fami­ lies build caves inside the mountains of dead birds. They shout me on, their hungry mouths as red and open as the wounds of their new homes, as I load the final bullet and aim...

... birds pissed the fence. I gaslit my lantern. Myth-sparked I happied myself with the story of evers & afters & forwards, slipperfooted, blinded by the glint off glass I refused every glimpse factly showing me that my own hand authored & armed this dream of light. minnesota review 89 (2017...

... down to a rope fray and flopping down next to Kiley in our small, bony bed. I’ll admit, passion’s a bird flown off long ago. But love, that’s a bigger bird, y’know? Where’s Kiley now, I wonder. Halfway to forever without me. And Calvin? He ain’t got much time...