Issue 28 | Spring 2023

Hyde Lake, Memphis

Ellis Elliott

I want to tell you about the flock

of starlings, pinpricks like pixels,

shifting direction against the grid

of a chestnut sunset pressed

to the page of twilight.

I want to tell you how I once wore

winter like a Goth teenager, sure

my reserve could repel and protect,

and how I yearned a flock to pluck

me by their talons, pull me to its fold.

I want to tell you it’s called a murmuration,

a word that rolls like cold silver balls

caught on the cusp of my tongue.

I want to tell you how in time I’ve learned

the sound of a thousand flutterings, softened

enough to follow, and found warmth

in the gathering.

About the Author

Ellis Elliott is a writer, ballet teacher, and facilitator of online writing groups called Bewilderness Writing. She has a blended family of six grown sons and lives with her husband and feisty dog, Mabel, in Juno Beach, FL. She has an MFA from Queens University, is a contributing writer for the Southern Review of Books, and an editor/workshop teacher for The Dewdrop contemplative journal. She has been published in Signal Mountain Review, Ignation Literary Magazine, Literary Mama, OPEN: Journal of Arts and Letter, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine/Award Poem, Sierra Nevada Review, Women of Appalachia Project Anthology, and others. Her first chapbook, Break in the Field, comes out in July, 2023, with Devil’s Party Press.