17.1 Summer 2019

Claire Eder A Response

helpless female / domineering male / is he significantly older? / why are the magpies in the poem?
—instructor comment on student poem



It took eight years for me to name
what happened.

Name as you name a bird
you have become familiar with.

Day after day, you see the white
wingtips fanned out like a hand of cards.

One day, you look up the name,
or a friend tells you.

Then, you say it every time you see one:
magpie, magpie, magpie.


Claire Eder’s poems and translations have appeared in Gulf Coast, Cincinnati Review, Pank, Midwestern Gothic, and Guernica, among other publications. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Find her online at claireeder.com.