and we in us find the eagle and the dove.
The eagle and the dove hold each other by the wing
and fly away. The black glass statue burns.
A dog skitters through the crowd.
The river hums like it wants to be distracted.
Our good king got shot and now he’s hacking
for breath in the alleyway.
But Vasily will be a saint soon.
We killed the dog though he died of loneliness.
The town square drank the saint’s blood,
ambrosia for the stone. Stones bathed
Vasily’s body. The slow river
kissed his paper neck and bid his goodbye.
It hurts now but you’ll be famous,
the birds whispered to him, wings like elbows,
whisking Vasily away.
The eye of the gun barrel glares—all
it has accomplished is immortality.
Vasily’s flying body gleams, the town square gasps.
Gunshots are the same in every language.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 4.
Julieanne Larick is a poet from Ohio. She is a poetry editor for GASHER Press, prose editor for jmww Journal, and social media assistant for The Dodge. In 2023, she attended the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference and a SAFTA Residency. Julieanne has poems in The Academy of American Poets, Eunoia Review, Kissing Dynamite, and more.
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