Last spring the mill closed.
A family was evicted.

At night they slept in the car
like angels thrown against a tree.

The years were hooded children
moving upward through a
vast telescope. Very quickly

Should the loons by the bay be real,
preserve us. Stuck together

like two gulls pulling apart
a fish in the bright air,
bickering, shrieking,

accelerating by our unison the divide.

 

 

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Timothy Straw is a poet, musician, and translator from Oregon and a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Their first book of poems is forthcoming from Fonograf Editions.