Bird Shaped | Etch To Their Own #133

Michael Akuchie’s You Are The One God Forgot uses a Russian doll of imagery to convey loneliness in absence. The imagery folds around one another, each line giving to the next, which readjusts the scale in each line — the island, the poem, the ruins.

Pair nicely with Kaveh Akbar’s Being In This World Makes Me Feel Like A Time Traveller which follows the sentiments here, with “When I wake, I ask God to slide into my head quickly before I do”.

Ducks, Newbury Port seems like a banger from the looks of this review

Unlike Michael’s poem above, or even Kaveh’s, who use god as a way to give away their autonomy in an avoidance of desire — Ray Ball’s Because I Couldn’t instead uses possessive transformation.

This is a benign possessive, the bird is inside the writer — trapped but protected. It plays on the idea of a memory being held in the body, the person is gone, but the shadow of an injury continues.

Pair with Paige Lewis’s You Can Take Off Your Sweater, I’ve Made Today Warm. This poem explores the diminishing narrator.

Thanks for reading Etch To Their Own. There seems to be good news around these days ❤