The kids from next door never knew 
what hit them when they tried 
to steal our bicycles; 
all four of our geese came at them 
out of the dark, a terror of beaks 
and talons on beating wings, 
a mingled shrieking of tough old birds 
and tender young humans 
that echoed up and down Darling Street 
at eleven o’clock in the evening, 
leaving us unable to sleep 
but helpless with laughter. 
It was the first informal civics lesson 
for our new neighbors, refugees 
and survivors from Castro’s Cuba: 
we Americans take our private property 
seriously, so don’t fuck with us 
or the creatures that used to be 
dinosaurs will tear you apart. 
And from that day forward 
we were the best of friends. 

Kurt Luchs

won a 2022 Pushcart Prize, a 2021 James Tate Poetry Prize, the 2021 Eyelands Book Award for Short Stories, and the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. He is a Contributing Editor of Exacting Clam. His humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny) (2017), and his poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up (2021), are published by Sagging Meniscus Press. His latest poetry chapbook is The Sound of One Hand Slapping (2022) from SurVision Books (Dublin, Ireland). He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Homunculus, poem by Kurt Luchs in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 12, March 2022)

⚡ Lives of the Gods, prose poem in MacQ (Issue 7, March 2021)