The Sunday poem, by Rebecca Hawkes

2026-02-28 - 16:06

I need to stop showing beautiful women in bars the photos of dead animals on my phone. Bottle flies like peridots pinned to a squirrel pelt. The pressed flowers of Michigan: a roadkill bucket list. Pancaked opossum, raccoon, chipmunk, decimated family of ducks. Deer with no head. I moved to the Midwest because I like to see green things turn red – Ornamental maple, ruby ficus, pitcher plants whose tendrils blush for flesh. I used to savour cravings like this: scarlet lipped. Now I only write about my thirst. That girl raising house wine to her mouth ... watch her sultry swoop of neck. Circling overhead, I can’t tell geese from crows from turkey vultures. Nature is precious but the mosquitos here are something else. Reassuring at least that I still bleed where I get bit. And I’ve bought all these potted plants, which means maybe I don’t intend to leave. Among the ducklings pasted on the highway, one ugly baby swan. The fate of certain cygnets: to stay lonely.