On the themes of leftovers and Amelia Earhart
The Egg
At the back
of my father’s
refrigerator is a
jar containing alcohol
and a twenty-
year-old egg
from Norma, né
Norm, a budgie
of evidently uncertain
sex, who one
day laid it
in the sound
hole of a
Hopalong Cassidy banjo
that hung on
the far side
of the kitchen,
cementing Norma’s femininity,
and the tenacity
of my father’s
remembering—a reliquary
of potential, a
reminder of what
might have been.
My Mother, Approaching Takeoff
We, your offspring, are Officially Concerned.
You seem increasingly foreign to us,
like someone we have heard of
but do not know. We sense
you are moving beyond us,
that your hidden agenda
will take you somewhere
we can’t follow, that one day
all that will remain are sightings,
false rumors, the odd fragment of bone.
Author Biography
Magdalen Powers writes, edits, and teaches in Salem, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Spork, Southeast Review, Monkeybicycle, Alice Blue Review, and 5_Trope, among other places.