Line Static

by Ryan Sanford Smith

Down the angled stairs
and he fills his mouth with bluejays

Light falling through the crown feathers
like tissue paper or a matinee

This is how he sounds

The long vapid grocery store lines

The women with fingernails like cracked lakebeds

This is the cruelty of the silence,
his beloved blackbladed throat trick

She saw some reason to repeat herself—
summer is over anyway

Ryan Sanford Smith is a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame's MFA program. His work has appeared elsewhere in The Pedestal Magazine, Mannequin Envy, and Merge Poetry.