Claire McQuerry

More than a year after the divorce,

I’m visiting my parents when dad comes in
to say one of the hens has been finished
by a hawk. November, the garden brittle
and slick with rain. Scattered feathers, her body
a shock beside the iced-over roses, a ruff of blood
where the head should be. When I finally left,
when I knew it was over, I drove for three days.
As I rode the empty ferry to my parents’ island,
I hardly felt a thing. The chickens then were
newly hatched—handfuls of yellow fluff,
sleeping under the warming lamp. I’d lift one out
to stroke the downy back, cupping it against
my ribs until it settled. By May, they’d all learned
to follow me, chirping down the gravel path.
He’d call each night to say he wanted to die.
He’d plead with me to change my mind and send,
every two or three days, another lavish bouquet—
coral roses with dianthus, dahlias, calla lilies.
I was all nerve and dread, all petal-thin skin. I was
afraid not to answer the phone. I have the gun
but I won’t use it. I just want you to know
what you’ve done. White blossoms had opened
on the apple tree. I’d turn over stones to catch
woodlice the chickens would eat from my hands.
I’d let my mind go blank and tilt my face to the sun.
I knew he had the guns because I’d seen them.
He liked to drive with one in the trunk. Another
gleamed beneath the bed. Ugly and sharp,
certain memories return, all these months
later—a cruel word, a lie I’d believed. The memories
have faces. They wriggle through as though alive.
Dad buries the hen’s body beneath the pines.
All day the others cower under the heather
and when I go out to coax them to their run,
the hawk watches from the site of his kill
though there’s no body now. I glare at him
across the lawn, rain misting my face, and he
stares back, taller than I’d have thought,
standing on those brutal talons. He won’t scare,
though I come close enough I could clear
the gap between us in two bounds.

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Claire McQuerry's poems have recently appeared in The Cincinnati Review, RHINO, Memorious, The Sun Magazine, The Southern Poetry Review and other journals. She is the author of Lacemakers (Southern Illinois University Press) and Through Glass Rooms (forthcoming from Parlor Press) and the co-translator, with Celine Bourhis, of Virginie Lalucq's Cutting the Stems (Saturnalia Books). She is an Associate Professor at Bradley University, where she directs the Creative Writing Program.