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Mother
by Lindsay Coleman
My mother was a terminator
of small birds over
the blank wheat of Pennsylvania
in the blind going dark
red dark
she was looking
in birds--arrows in the iron
lung of the dawn I was born--
for something beyond
birds, their whistling tick-
tick chests
air hammered between stars
breath curled over the lip
of the barrel, tiny o
in this blood ranting
through my body all night
is an ancient sound:
a whistling, warning one
bright hollow of another.
About the Author
Lindsay Coleman teaches English at a high school outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
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