Elizabeth Sochko Hussain

Pheasant

I wanted you then, especially then, with the dead bird on my lap 

and your smirk. I wanted to follow your instruction. Pluck each

feather, gently. And so on. Summer erased my memory. A river 

between your hands on my wrist, still dotted with blood and dirt. 

Wrong choice after wrong choice. When sky held up the clouds.

Elizabeth Sochko Hussain received her MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, where she worked as a poetry editor for LUMINA. Her poems have been published in Muzzle Magazine, Red Wheelbarrow, Columbia Journal, Quarterly West, Columbia Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Originally from South Carolina, she now lives in Los Angeles.