Ariana Yeatts-Lonske
Evening at the World Bird Sanctuary
The room is an egg.
We are inside the egg, and the barred owl
can hear our heartbeats.
The barred owl can hear the whisper
of mice feet under snow.
The barred owl is here
because the first face he saw
was beakless.
Irreversible illegal imprint—
He wants to mate with all of you, his trainer says.
He spends his days shrieking and searching
for a nest.
We laugh, but I feel myself become
the shreds of small mammal
in his talons.
The sunlight
through streaked feathers.
The tree
he wishes
had a hollow.
The wild
calling back in the night.
The egg, the egg, the egg.
Ariana Yeatts-Lonske is a disabled poet and meditator. Her writing has won an Academy of American Poets prize. Ariana moderates a support group for MCAS patients; she is interested in art as survival, survival as an art. She lives in St. Louis with her partner Matthew and their cat Dandelion.