But I knew the end, had already been there.Touched its elongated snout, the awful hairs.Watched it pushing its pie tin aroundthe backyard, its tiny crossed eyes so closeto the ground. Wondered at the plan as I wassent back, my shoe filled with blood, my pathso queer. At school I walked a thin perimeterof chalk. Impermanent, I begged the abovefor his sweet mother love, the pelican that bentits neck to open the fount of pure bloodfrom its very own breast but he sent to methis to figure instead and there I beganmy lifelong work—rook di goo rook di goosaid a couple of dirty pigeons in a hazel tree.
Ars Poetica
Bridget Lowe
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Copyright © 2025 by Bridget Lowe.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Bridget Lowe is the author of the poetry collections My Second Work (2020) and At the Autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky (2013), both from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her work has appeared widely in publications including The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is currently completing her third book with the support of a MacDowell Fellowship. Her honors include the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Discovery/92NY Poetry Award, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation fellowship to MacDowell. She lives in Kansas City.
46.2
Middlebury, Vermont
Middlebury College
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Carolyn Kuebler
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Leslie Sainz
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Jennifer Chang
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