BY JAN WIEZOREK

Copyright is held by the author.

You see inside: the suede bodies
of nesting bluebirds, while others
dive-bomb you just for looking —

their beaks open, swaddling, fallow
as her skin and bones, where she sits
across the street, wheeled, vulnerable

as the bluebird in her, eating as much,
one wing wounded, grey fear in the air,
aging out of the nest, a body bird-rapt,

a mouth supped. I saw a bluebird
down the block flying as lives do
— and I believe, sight unseen,

she will become full flush again
in summer, certainly by autumn,
or when cold releases her to the sky.

***

Jan Wiezorek writes from Michigan. His chapbook Forests of Woundedness is forthcoming from Seven Kitchens Press (2025). Wiezorek’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, at The London Magazine, The Westchester Review, Lucky Jefferson, Triggerfish Critical Review, and elsewhere. He taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and wrote the teachers’ ebook Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011). His poetry has been awarded by the Poetry Society of Michigan and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Visit him at janwiezorek.substack.com.