Previous Issue: Spring/Summer 2010

Baby Girl  
Amanda Cobb

She calls a cardinal, in the dead of winter, robin.
I bought books to help her with the difference and now
she can sing the song of the bobwhite, though still, robin.

There’s snow this morning, but they’ve come back.
It seems from a feast; their fat red breasts drag on the ground.
There are too many to count, but one blue jay.
My yard is a disappointment.

Stupid birds, the feeder’s empty.

Now a wren,
a bird not in her book,
eleven more.

They fly away as one
and come back through a hungry sieve, a delicate scatter.
They peck the lawn for an hour or more
and this becomes the new dance
for coming and going, inside and out.

Robins, she’s not here.

Amanda Cobb was selected by G.C. Waldrep for the 2007 AWP Intro Prize. Her writing has appeared in Georgetown Review, Arts & Letters, Controlled Burn, and elsewhere.