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I have two poems in this issue:

Blue-Winged Teal

Small dabbling duck,

wallow in freshwater,

mince your steps on the sticky fronds

of April,

rest your blue bill on your speckled chest

like a dignified dowager

looking down her nose.

Fashionable in your touches of sapphire

on breast and wings,

your color is more blue than

what the paint store calls teal,

something more moody than

turquoise,

more matte than satin.

and...

The Cat and the Fireworks

At the first volley of fireworks,

unseen except for flashes

of lightening like light,

the calico cat sprang to alert.

leapt to the windowsill,

retreated under the bed,

then emerged and sprang to the

top of the bureau.

A low growl rumbled from

her belly-

a sound I never heard her make before.

Deep, rolling growl

sound radiating through fur

as she watched from

her patrol post

for the duration of the fireworks.

She became the cat in someone’s bedroom

in London,

on the first night of the Blitz.

She became the cat distracted from catching rats in the church

in Dresden,

as the planes rained down fire and boulders.

She became the cat cowering in the doorway

in Baghdad,

When the Americans bombed Saddam

back to his bunker.

All the cats

in all the arrowstruck, cannonstruck

cities down the centuries,

interrupted, startled,

terrified, growling deep,

feral, innocent,

instincts bristling.