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Whirling Bird

By / Issue 12

Oh cotton star in the old-timey jug
I’m drinking dandelion-ade by the electric keyboard
Drink deep
The nation is so far away
Electrifyingly
But here
The air is tricked with gemstones illuminated
Whose entire picture turns into a whirling bird
Whose tiniest drawings make me cry
I am not even making myself

LAUREN HALDEMAN is the author of the books Instead of Dying (2017 Colorado Prize for Poetry), Calenday (2014), and The Eccentricity is Zero (2014). Her work has appeared in Tin House, The Colorado Review, Fence, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. A comic book artist and poet, she’s received the Colorado Prize for Poetry, an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. You can find her online at http://laurenhaldeman.com.