Bird Syntax
Today man-made matter outweighs all organic matter on Earth.
Today a small Bdelloid rotifer is resurrected after 24,000 years in ice.
Today the "Barn Owl" is split in three: Eastern, Western, American.
Today a muon wobbles, sensitive, maybe, to a force not in our best theory. Someone says there must be something contributing to this white space.
*
John James Audubon is thirty-five years old when he starts down the Ohio river in 1820. He carries with him a small portrait of his wife, Lucy, and a piece of paper containing a line the length of her foot, to remind him of the shoe he promises to buy for her when he returns.
*
Outside Peoria a farmer tells me that chickens must “condense” a binocular field of vision from their two independent, monocular sightlines by “weaving” and “bobbing” their heads to grant each eye separate access to the world. This, she says, is why so many fear them.
As I pull a book from the shelf old newspaper clippings float to the ground.
*
In my dream a stork walks across the lawn to the door and drops a package on the porch, leaning to whisper in my ear. “I really am surprised at you – ,” he begins.
Jackson McGrath is a writer and artist based in Chicago, Illinois. He received a BFA in Studio Art from the Cooper Union and holds an MA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing from Northwestern University. His work has appeared in Blue Arrangements journal and at Mana Contemporary Miami, among others.
See more of Jackson's work in 13.3