I Must Listen to the Birds

DeeSoul Carson

text is displayed to look like simplified bird drawings. from left to right: but the state stole / all my good metaphors. There's so much nothing / already being done. There's No/thing(TM -Trademark symbol) to spare. Nothing(TM) galore. / Nothing(TM) frothing at the mouth of / our institutions. It's all anyone seems to / be able to afford these days. Nothing(TM) 5 for / $1 at Walmart. Nothing(TM) half off in / the targeted ad between my cousin's engagement / and the headlines empty of blame, nothing we / aren't already familiar with. We've got so / much Nothing(TM) we've wormed it into / everything we manufacture. High-fructose / Nothing(TM) sweetening our bloodstreams. Nothing(TM) / holding together our planes. Nothing(TM) pumped out / of our Nothing(TM) factories while Nothing(TM) / scholars argue back and forth whether all this Nothing(TM) / will haunt us one day. Is haunting us / now. Nothing(TM) in the hills and in the streams / and in the straining for the sound of play/ing. We gathered all the Nothing(TM) / and put it in museums so we wouldn't forget / all the Nothing(TM) we did. Curated Nothing(TM) exhibitions / and raed Nothing(TM) artist statements and hosted / galas sponsored by Nothing(TM). Saying *Look.* / Saying *Listen.* Saying *When there / is nothing left* *to mourn, the birds / will sing for us still."

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DeeSoul Carson is a poet, educator, and host of the O,Word? podcast. A Stanford alum, his work is featured or forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, AGNI, & elsewhere. For his work, DeeSoul has received a National Endowment for the Arts and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, as well as fellowships from the NYU MFA program, the Watering Hole, and the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference. His full-length debut, The Laughing Barrel, is forthcoming from Alice James Books in Spring 2027. Find more of his work at deesoulpoetry.com

The Kenyon Review

Spring 2025

Gambier, Ohio

Kenyon College

The David F. Banks Editor
Nicole Terez Dutton

Associate Editor
Sergei Lobanov-Rostovsky

Managing Editor
Nayt Rundquist

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