Angela Just

With Any Luck

All morning I study the dialects of birds,
pick up words like a tourist trying to blend in.
My dictionary fails beyond who-who, tsk-tsk and
sometimes I wonder if they are talking about me.
Soon I’m hearing trollop-trollop-trollop, lazee-lazee,
weasel-cheater. Maybe they are talking about me.
I squint my eyes and ears their way—I’m here,
where are you? Where are you? All of us working
the gerunds and nouns of the day: pleading our
case to the unseen judge, scratching off clouds
with the shiny pennies of trills, picking the bolted
vault of sky. By dusk, we’ve outrun the ticking
shadows of trees, still trying to guess the name
of the crooked little man who holds our debt.

Angela Just’s mini chapbook, “Everything I Own,” was published by Porkbelly Press. Additional poems have seen the light of day in After Hours, Haunted Water’s Press, Sow’s Ear, Flyway, Bird’s Thumb, Leaping Clear, and other journals. She is a Chicago writer. If she had to pick a very special, once-a-year sweet, it would be Pavlova. Once discovered, no going back.

… return to 2021 Poetry Contest Issue Table of Contents.