POETRY BY JOSHUA MASSEY

Murmuration

One morning all the pigeons did somersaults and flew away

and left us to step around empty shade. Some of us missed

their cooing and the flocking fleets like the Blue Angels

flying before football games; others laughed and thought,

What joy now that the flying rats are gone! There’s

another: the joy of brief living compounded, one man

looked through his binoculars and saw himself there

on the river with breasts of solid gold. And he saw

them there, the pigeons, there, on the horizon, drawing

pictures in charcoal on the concrete banks. Rudimentary

lines: a map of delicacy, fractal. They were content.

Our sidewalks became slippery with ice cream

in their absence. Rainbow sprinkles couldn’t even

bring them back. Our own murmurs became spectacle.

Joshua Massey is a writer and graduate student living in New York City, where they study American material culture. Someday, they aspire to own at least two cats, read all the books on their bookshelves, and find space for their growing collection of knick knacks, trinkets, and objets d'art. Their poems appear or are forthcoming in Defunct Magazine, Petrichor, and New Note Poetry, and their prose can be found in the exhibition catalog for This is Not: Aldwyth in Retrospect, published by the Greenville County Museum of Art.