Staci R. Schoenfeld

LISTEN

Listen. The cicadas just turned on. They're stuttering something about summer, trying to remember its taste after the long cycle of dreaming electric drone, as if trapped under wires carrying current. Sound of all is well, sound of home. Until some background hum calls them, blinking, from the earth every seventeen years.

Listen as the starling caught in the chimney's throat beats its small music against brick. Hollow bones, unanswered echoes. The mouth of the fireplace releases a scuffle of Morse code a tap tap ruffle scratch until exhausted, the bird settles, warbles good night.

Staci R. Schoenfeld received an MFA in creative writing from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and is Managing Poetry Editor at Revolution House. A recipient of an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and residencies from the Ragdale Foundation, Edward F. Albee Foundation, and the New York Mills Arts Retreat, her poems appear in or are forthcoming from Greensboro Review, Washington Square, Southern Humanities Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Muzzle, Bellevue Literary Review, bluestem, South Dakota Review and diode, among others.