homage to the owl we hit driving home from the memorial art gallery
Poetry
i look up & there you are,
wingspread in the road,
swooping down on some small prey.
the passenger cries stop, stop, stop!
don't you realize we're going to hit it?
but we don’t realize
until it is too late & we are past.
something shatters in the car after that.
it is too dark to see if some miracle
has saved your feathered life,
if the scream alerted you—
if you flew away, chasing
some other mouse, living
some other life that doesn’t end
with you left
majestic in your flight,
great & terrible in your brokenness.
Genevieve Hartman is a Korean American poet and reviewer based in upstate New York. She is the Social Media & Outreach Coordinator at Adi Magazine and an Art Editor for Gasher Journal. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, EcoTheo, River Mouth Review, Stone Canoe, and others. Follow her on Instagram at @gena_hartman, on Twitter at @gena_hartman1, or find her at genahartman.com.