Pigeon | William C. Blome

‘Tis a hot day in the city, ‘tis, ‘tis, ‘tis,
hunting feathers with wife number-one
(she of the Left Eye Lopes look
and a leathery-weathery time-worn ass,
and a heart big enough to thump-thump-
thump for tragedies and charity –
oh look at how she pulls her hand
away from far inside my fly
to spear and then tilt her open purse,
that coins drop down to a beggar’s feet).

At four-thirty or thereabouts, we’ll quit
and pool both bags to one, one, one.
My sweating bounty will be kind of meager:
lots of pigeon feathers, a seahawk pinion
from near the harbor, a chartreuse plume
of obviously appareled origin. I foresee
she’ll open up with something special off
a falcon and then a tail feather from a squawk-
squawk-squawking seagull, but just like mine,
her take will be overwhelmingly pigeon.

William C. Blome lives wedged between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is a master’s degree graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such fine mags as Poetry London, PRISM International, In Between Hangovers, Fiction Southeast, Roanoke Review, and The California Quarterly.