We May Eat Fruit — Richard Prins

 

Richard Prins is a lifelong New Yorker. Forthcoming projects include Brain Flavor: A Lyric History of Swahili Hip Hop (No University Press) and his translation of the Swahili novel They Are Us (University of Georgia Press), which received a 2023 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and 2024 National Endowment For the Arts Translation Fellowship. His work also appears in The Best American Essays 2024.

Jesus Said

The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

The hireling flees because he is a hireling,

sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep.

I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you.

The hireling flees because he is a hireling.

Whoever desires to save his life will lose it.

I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you

as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.

Whoever desires to save his life will lose it.

Bad fruit will be chopped down and burned.

As a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,

her rooster crows: You will deny me.

Bad fruit will be chopped down and burned.

But if the salt loses the taste of salt,

the rooster crows. You will deny me

if you do whatever I command you.

But if the salt loses the taste of salt,

everyone will be seasoned with fire.

If you do whatever I command you,

cast out demons you have received.

Everyone will be seasoned with fire.

I am the true vine, and my Father

cast out demons. You have received

my body which is broken for you.

I am the true vine. And my Father

sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep

my body, which is broken for you.

The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.

Some Birds for Robert Rauschenberg -- Poems by Robert Farrell

The poems in Some Birds for Robert Rauschenberg can be thought of as boxes into which has been placed individual words and small phrases from various sources – the author’s notebooks, contemporary birding websites, research and news articles, as well 19th and early 20th century bird-related texts. Neither found poetry nor wholly original (except in its syntax), each box is a gathering of materials, “their history exposed by their new shapes” and “labored commonly with happiness.”

* * *

Robert Farrell lives in the Bronx, NY, where he works as a college librarian and writing instructor. A finalist in Narrative Magazine’s annual poetry contest, his work has appeared in Magma, Posit, The Brooklyn Review, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies and elsewhere. His chapbook Meditations on the Body was also published by Ghostbird Press. 

On the Other Side of the Magpie by Hannah Lee

 Winner of the 2023 Birdhouse Prize!

Hannah Lee is a NYC based Korean-American poet who processes her world through poetry. She is a graduate from the CUNY Queens College MFA program, and was an editor at Armstrong Literary. Her work has been featured in Encounters Magazine.

Sparrow

The botanical garden in my neighborhood is free 

until April. A frigid Sunday morning and a bad 

NCIS episode later, we find ourselves walking 

through grass peeking through patches of melting 

snow, and the bare gnarled branches reach not for light,

but warmth. My mother sits to rest and I can’t help 

but see the same patches of snow, as if melting through 

her hair, streaking past the past. And the past is here, 

I can see it in her eyes as she looks up to those same gnarled 

fingers reaching for warmth like her own. 

She has been complaining about the cold as of late. 

I can’t remember when she started aching and walking

slowly, I can’t help it. I’ll pull a muscle now.

We walk down the streets trying to buy soy milk and warm 

roasted sweet potatoes. I want to see what she sees 

in those trees that line the park. The bare trees with 

a sole bird perched atop. She mentions the bird to me. 

she wonders about it, not aloud, but I hear. 

The other birds fly about and flitter 

towards the ground in groups, playing, eating, living 

their small bird lives. I envy these birds 

that know more about her thoughts than I.

Reading & Conversation at CUNY Queens College

 

Lest We All Get Clipped by Joe Gross

 Winner of the 2022 Birdhouse Prize!

Joseph Gross, a recent CUNY Queens College MFA graduate, offers this collection of poems that seek our innate divinity through both ecclesiastical and (extra)ordinary experience. 

Beatitude

 

 

a forsaken saint

in a shop-rite uniform

is begging alms

on the overpass.

 

he sees my uniform.

oh, you work at shit-rite, too?

we talk, & my wallet 

comes out––

 

sometimes 

multiplication 

of loaves

just means

splitting 

one loaf 

between

two people.

 

but miracles,

like mutual aid,

are survival pending 

revolution.

  

Goodbye Twitter

 I have deactivated the Ghostbird Twitter account. Just couldn’t be part of Musk’s agenda - whatever it is. No judgement if you still use Twitter - I enjoyed it for a time. 

Ghostbird lives on! Spread the word however you like. 

Swim Poems by Steve Mentz

 

Click the cover to purchase

These poems explore ocean swimming as ecological meditation for the Anthropocene.

We swim into the flooding of our world, knowing we cannot stop it changing.

The keywords are feeling and form. 

The goal is unlearning dominion. 

The abrasive element is salt. 

The color is blue. 

Anthropocene Swimming 

Every day, like prayer or meditation,

I follow high tide into buoyancy

Where only form patterns my exertion

And only feeling blazes my life in sea.

To see, to see! says the Polish master

In a language not his own. With violence

And despair he meets me on shore astern

Before I disembark the boat from whence

He stares down, sailor to swimmer, blind

To joy’s immersion intoxication

The wet that sets me afire slips my mind — 

Swimming hits skin in time of dictation.

Not words but world’s wet on body I crave

To cross with slow arms from dawn to the grave.

Borderland by Sara Rempe

 

These poems explore the identities we offer, and those we refuse.  Through confessional lines that rend the veil between truth and illusion, Sara Rempe takes us to the places where mercy & forgiveness entwine. 

Rescue

         (for Sid)

 

Everything is a threat.

Even the soft offering

 

of an open palm

is suspect.  The past is

 

leashed to us

like shadow.

 

Here is the lesson

we didn’t learn:

 

there are people

who want to love us.

Purchase here.

Forestwish by Francesca Hyatt

Winner of the 2021 Birdhouse Chapbook Prize!

In this collection of hybrid forms, Francesca Hyatt guides us into the world of trees that surrounds us, but often goes under appreciated.  These pages urge us to "enjoy the gifts of the forest and leave plenty of seeds in [our] trace."

Purchase HERE!

Metropolia by Paul Luikart

 

"With the concision of Lydia Davis and the obsessions of Flannery O'Connor, Metropolia takes

readers through a demented dreamscape of post apocalyptic cities, populated by broken characters

struggling to live, love, dream, and believe. I couldn't put it down."

— Cameron Dezen Hammon, author of This is My Body.

"Luikart's skillfully rendered moments manage to be hypnotically disturbing and darkly humorous at the same time. These brief glimpses possess a meditative quality not unlike stills from a half-forgotten movie. The guy can write." 

— Reid Paley

Purchase HERE!