I have a bird in my mouth. He can’t get out. His wings and head keep struggling. Everybody notices bulges in my cheeks and asks what’s wrong. Rfmmrmff I say. I can’t seem to open my mouth wide enough for him to get more than a foot or some feathers to poke out. I go to a doctor. I can’t really breathe that well. The doctor believes in talk therapy. The doctor says bird why are you in this woman’s mouth. The bird doesn’t respond, but his head appears and I can see this all from a mirror on the wall of the office. The bird points its head at the doctor and opens its mouth and there is a bird in the bird’s mouth. Apparently I am the largest Matryoshka doll. The doctor asks the bird in the bird’s mouth why it is in the bird’s mouth, but the bird is still so small, just a baby. He opens his tiny beak and inside there is a grain of rice. The doctor removes the grain of rice with a pair of tweezers, which I give him from my purse. My jaw hurts something awful by this point. The grain of rice has something written on it in a tiny, steady hand. I give the doctor a magnifying glass from my purse as well. He reads the inscription aloud and it says each of us is but a child of God.
To read more poems by Russ Woods, please purchase the issue here.
Russ Woods is a poet living in Chicago. He is author of the chapbooks Spekled Flowers, (Persistent Editions 2013), Warm Morning (The New Megaphone 2013), and, with Carrie Lorig, rootpoems (Radioactive Moat 2013). With Jeannette Gomes he edits Love Symbol Press and runs the reading series Poetry Made of Diamonds.
