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Murmuration<\/strong><\/p>\n When the birds came, the pavement was <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Elizabeth O’Connor<\/strong> is a postgraduate student in English Literature, researching ecofeminism in the poetry of H.D. She lives in Birmingham, U.K.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Murmuration When the birds came, the pavement was dark with the smell of rain; there was a quietness to it, to the city laid out waiting like an awkward lover. By the railway I watched alone as they were called to drift across the tracks like leaves, each bird a grape seed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10237"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10240,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10237\/revisions\/10240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ndark with the smell of rain; there was
\na quietness to it, to the city laid out waiting like an
\nawkward lover.
\nBy the railway I watched alone as they were called
\nto drift across the tracks like leaves,
\neach bird a grape seed spat by the sun.
\nI watched from the bridge \u2013 could see a child
\nin a yellow raincoat watch from the other side
\nand felt the smallness of his hand in mine.
\nWe were the only ones \u2013 us and a skeletal
\nmutt who danced on the tracks with the
\nmaddening itch of chase on its paws.
\nThe train dispersed them \u2013 the sound of its
\nonward rush acute as a woman\u2019s scream \u2013
\nand I cursed, sucked the air back into my lungs,
\nhurled a rock. I looked the word up
\nwhen I got home, watched it
\nscratch itself into the page, but it was no use;
\nthe story was no longer mine, but belonged
\nto its anti-climax, broke itself over its own
\nmuscle and bone.<\/p>\n