perhappened mag
issue 15: DISGUISE
on learning cuckoo finches
spend their lives disguised
EMILY FRANKLIN
as other birds, small deceitful birds
nest in my body
something average like
a sparrow hardly noticed
until it is too late and even
a beak the size of a staple
breaks the skin from the inside
out as though I am a hollow
rotted tree drawn by a child
just that black oval in my belly
and a wren peeking out round
as a calling bell or house finch with
its tendency to succumb to night
fright, a bird panic attack settling
like unbearable fog, inescapable until
the bird beats itself to death, slamming
into whatever’s near—cage, trunk, box,
window as though with its palm-sized
body it calls out—watch me, do you see
I know just who you are.
nest in my body
something average like
a sparrow hardly noticed
until it is too late and even
a beak the size of a staple
breaks the skin from the inside
out as though I am a hollow
rotted tree drawn by a child
just that black oval in my belly
and a wren peeking out round
as a calling bell or house finch with
its tendency to succumb to night
fright, a bird panic attack settling
like unbearable fog, inescapable until
the bird beats itself to death, slamming
into whatever’s near—cage, trunk, box,
window as though with its palm-sized
body it calls out—watch me, do you see
I know just who you are.
Emily Franklin’s debut poetry collection Tell Me How You Got Here was published by Terrapin Books in 2021. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Guernica, New Ohio Review, Cincinnati Review, Blackbird, Epoch, The Rumpus, and Cimarron Review among other places as well as featured on National Public Radio and named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries. She won The Pinch Literary Prize for poetry in May 2021. Twitter: @efranklinauthor; Facebook: @emily.franklin.528; Website: emilyfranklin.com.