When the war comes


A bustard huddles on a branch,
outside of the window...
Looking for what? Corpses?
Who knows what has happened here!
The crosses rib the skies with 
Their perpendicularity. . .
Do not go outside!
Surely that smell means death 
And lots of it!
Vincent Price reading a scary 
story did not help 
the gods of sleep
and so they were denied
or were we punished?

The house is shaking.
Surely the bombs are breaking
apart the infrastructure
of us living-together 
waking up so slowly
to the golden light.
It’s not over, hear that?
That whistling through the hot air:
bullets humming
then zipping 
sometimes killing.
Don’t go outside!

I need a hand. 
Please stay and help me 
rearrange my closet.

I can’t stand to see you leave.

To show a friend 
your back is bad luck
and the heat rose
to an insufferable level.
The sweet postman gave 
me moon eyes, yes 
sheep bleat at the edges of the field
watching the traffic from
a ledge high above the city street.

The cigarette smoke rises
and clouds his sight of the moon
so alluring, hanging behind
where the city disappears
into farms.

What happened, again 
I must know
because those birds,
picking so furiously at the meat
and bones of god knows
whose daughter,
whose brother,
have not been cleaned,
nor will be.


Trevor Cunnington is a queer and neurodivergent writer/artist/educator who lives in Toronto. Their work has appeared in Open Arts Forum, Poetry Super Highway, Last Leaves, Cerasus, Maisonneuve, and various anthologies. Additionally, they have work forthcoming in Inlandia, Radon, Word For/Word, The Orchards Poetry Review, and The Rivanna Review. Besides writing and reading, they enjoy hiking and gardening. You can find them on instagram @trevorcunnington and on twitter @trevorcunning.

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