POEM: Notes from the Quarterly Training Session

By Frances Pearce, special to Charleston Currents

Barred tail feathers, round brown face.
I wish you would wake, wish you could.
In this sleeping posture – lying
on your back (unnatural, I know),
you appear relaxed.

I watch as Curtis cuts away your skin,
slices open your chest cavity.
We identify the interclavicular air sac.
Stacy and Keely tell us spreading
wings increases oxygen flow.

But it’s too late for that. You’re dead,
frozen weeks ago, awaiting this dissection.
Today we locate your trachea, with tweezers
stretch your worm-like intestines, open,
for you, your beak, lift your boned tongue.

I stand back, focus on your barred
tail feathers, your brown owl face,
imagine you alive,
imagine you soaring,
moving away into the night.

Pearce

Frances J. Pearce is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. She is the author of a poetry chapbook Those Carolina Parakeets Once Far from Extinct and a completed novel manuscript. Her writing has been published in Archive: South Carolina Poetry Since 2005, Good JuJu Review, Fall Lines, Kakalak, and The Saturday Evening Post. She lives in Mount Pleasant and serves as president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina.  The poem above was first published in Those Carolina Parakeets Once Far from Extinct (Finishing Line Press, 2014).