The Orange & Bee are thrilled to bring you a new poem by Susan Cronin, full of vivid and visceral imagery. Delight, wonder, and dark magic.
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A baby disappeared with the owls. This was a great many years ago. The baby loved to gurgle at the owls in her sleep. One night, they clawed through the roof, till their full-moon eyes could peek in, till they could eat up what they wanted. What could her parents have heard in their baby’s animated chatter but the joy of being answered? When despair fed on their hearts, they set a large pot on the stove, willing those owls to tumble in. They would boil the owls’ darkest spells out of their jellied eyed, out of their cracked apart beaks. What happened after that, no one can say. This was a great many years ago. The cottage where the family lived, where the baby was born, still stands at the edge of the unknown. The clink of old pipes continues to fracture the air, chipped crystal and ash drift to the kitchen table. Not even hungry mice go near it.
Susan Cronin earned an MFA in poetry from The New School and has received support from Community of Writers. Her poems have appeared in journals including Qu, Pine Hills Review, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Crow & Cross Keys, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Southwest Review (2022 Elizabeth Matchett Stover Award).
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