"In My Bedroom" by Kelly Emmrich
Day 9 Of Quarantine—I Watch a Crow Eat French Fries
from the Dumpster Behind My Apartment by Kate Wright
He’s not afraid of our waste, germs.
His feet grip the wooden fence
meant to mask the unsightly
dumpster from my view. He eats
fries bit by bit, ripping with his beak
and foot, then jumps back in. I can’t
see him but can hear him rustling
around for another. He’s not dumb.
He finds a particularly dry one,
flies it over to a fresh puddle
on the concrete and soaks it, rips it
and eats it. It has been two weeks
since I let another human touch me.
Crows mate for life, scientists think
because of convenience, but the boy
who touched me lives halfway
across the country and I can’t
make myself go there. Studies show
crows never forget a face,
unlike me, sitting and struggling
to remember green eyes or blue,
unable to shake the feeling
of my hand in his, our disinfected skin
dry and bristling against each other.
His feet grip the wooden fence
meant to mask the unsightly
dumpster from my view. He eats
fries bit by bit, ripping with his beak
and foot, then jumps back in. I can’t
see him but can hear him rustling
around for another. He’s not dumb.
He finds a particularly dry one,
flies it over to a fresh puddle
on the concrete and soaks it, rips it
and eats it. It has been two weeks
since I let another human touch me.
Crows mate for life, scientists think
because of convenience, but the boy
who touched me lives halfway
across the country and I can’t
make myself go there. Studies show
crows never forget a face,
unlike me, sitting and struggling
to remember green eyes or blue,
unable to shake the feeling
of my hand in his, our disinfected skin
dry and bristling against each other.
Kate Wright received her BA and MA in English from Penn State and her MFA in Creative Writing and Environment from Iowa State. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Okay Donkey, Digging Through the Fat, Rogue Agent, Ghost City Review, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @KateWrightPoet
Kelly Emmrich is an illustrator and animator living and working in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her work has appeared in the magazines Moonhood Magazine, Dream Noir, and Meat for Tea. She studied creative writing and animation at the University of Mary Washington. She is currently working as a beer label designer for a microbrewery in Afton, Virginia and also as a freelance animator and illustrator.
