Pushcart Nominated: Pilferage

by Zachary Bartles

Pushcart Nominated Poem:

PILFERAGE

after “St. Kevin and the Blackbird” by Seamus Heaney

Suffering indeed a privation of the good, I hooked

my forefinger around the trigger, then squeezed,

releasing the air that I had levered into the compression chamber

like how one draws water from a well pump:

out shot a mustard-seed-size pellet of bright steel like faith

that I could have planted elsewhere, anywhere

save in a blackbird’s breast. The bird scrabbled for

purchase at rungs of branch, of twig, that were not seized

and were not seized, trailing molt like the negative

image of downy snow captured by memory’s slow exposure.

I threw aside the gun and ran after the bird,

crying. It lay on its back, wings like a seraphim’s hiding its face,

one passerine leg kicking like a spot-rubbed dog’s.

I reached and picked up the bird.

It weighed about that of other pilferings—

mythological and historical—from trees

forbidden in kind: Milton’s apple; Augustine’s pear.

But as I held it, I thought it weighed as much as the thing it was:

a dying bird. After a while its body shook like a Pentecostal’s

ekstasized of spirit. Then a last breath was

lifted from the load. Except the encumbrance increased,

and I feared much the dead bird, the craftsgodship

of its form, and the judgement of its maker should I continue

destroying his works, be it bird or be it my soul, a sin’s breadth nearer hell.

ZACHARY BARTLES

Zachary Bartles was raised in the Shenandoah Valley of West Virginia. His work appears or is forthcoming in Appalachian Review, Ekstasis Magazine by Christianity Today, Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, and Ribbons by the Tanka Society of America, among others. He lives in East Texas with his wife, where he is a stay-at-home father to their daughter.