Poetry
A Bird Got in My Bag
Deborah Blenkhorn
issue three
A bird got in my bag
She said
And hastily stood up
My dress seems ok though
An elegant figure
She gracefully abandoned the table
And exited the room
I couldn’t help but wonder
How it came about
Did she leave that purse somewhere, at a birdable distance outside While, lost in a reverie
Sitting at the other end of the bench
She didn’t even notice what was happening
The predatory avian
Beaking its way through her personal effects
Her make up, her wallet, her hairbrush, her Kleenex
Her hair ties, her Tampax,
Her cough drops, her pain killers,
Her notes to herself?
So when you see me
And you marvel that I seem to be ok
I’ve got it all together
As I move gracefully through my life
I need you to know
There’s something else going on
You can’t tell when you glance my way
But if I do seem a little out of sorts
There’s a simple explanation
A bird got in my bag
About the Author
Deborah Blenkhorn is a settler-scholar on the unceded ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. A strong commitment to coaching others to achieve their potential as writers inspires her teaching at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and the University of British Columbia. Deborah’s creative work traces a path through her childhood in rural Ontario, summers in Canada’s Maritime provinces, and mid-life in the Pacific Northwest. Fusing memoir and imagination, her poems, essays and stories since 2022 have been featured in over two dozen publications in North America, Britain, Australia, and India.
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