Jasmine Neosh’s fiction and poetry have recently appeared in THE2NDHAND, Fiction at Work and the One Night Only Magazine, among others. She currently lives and works in Chicago.
The bird in my chest
hasn’t moved in three days.
I keep poking at it
and talking to it,
trying to coax it out of hiding
with things I think
a bird might like.
I had my younger brother whistle
into my mouth today.
He rested his ear on my chest for hours after,
listening for a response.
He says the strings
may be too tight.
He says there is a strained creaking
in the accordian as my lungs
open, expand
and collapse:
the machinery in there wheezes,
bleary-eyed factorytown corpses
stomping their feet in hopeless protest.