Poem: Nesting

Nesting

A red bird hides in the gutters of my grandmother’s house

& I wake gasping from a dream where she was swallowed

by a heaving ocean & the bird builds a nest out of the muck

that hasn’t been cleared away & I learn that even in dreams

you can never outrun the flood & the bird settles in

& the roof of my grandmother’s house sags downward

into a smile.

—Emily Zogbi

This article appears in December 2016.