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From One Position






                                 a mourning dove calls the mouth closed call it calls to couple

with the mower a row and several lawns over continuing to stall in one position

blading the air in static excision rote sun under green gone to shine less directly

on me as I wanted no more the mower the ornamental openings of the labors of

the long low lawns I grew out from the proper song that to hear returns an dread

beyond reason but sounds of the dove its open-air carriage there beyond reason

to the level of the flat-mown lawns from the grasses low I have heard the hollow

the genitive rotation of the accompaniment to the so-called proper six-note song

from the widespreading ground in abundance the resilient song the prolific dove

the monogamous of least concern in open and semi-open country elliptical dove

in cloth sacks most hunted shy millet to lure there and with leaden shot the dove

despite the consumed of singly sung adapted to areas altered of a dove alteration

in me of dove and grasses torn of grasses tearing figure not the dove not the dove

of the mower clear vehicle of dread across the lawn grasses torn too clean too un

tangling too low and too tended too many clearings too after the courting of dove

a green beneaths green a green uniformity perforces the mower its waiting for the

grasses to grow to establish and preoccupy with purpose the mowing its terminus

whirs the sounding stops of the mower whether made to go itself across a ground

vehicle self propelled via human pushing froward vehicle is stopped its one note

exhaust when has it stopped before the ongoing dove the sound dove and dread

run out the living throat coursing over the coo that carries into silence before lift

off the vans through air inaudible except from very close very close microphones

hinges on a door and at a remove of some hours a shift in this what had sounded

of a motor powering the bladed mower going nowhere is an engine tethered to a

hollow hose winded back into the company vehicle approaching now a vacuum





Alyssa Perry's recent writing appears in The Canary, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, and Yalobusha Review. She is the assistant editor at Rescue Press and teaches creative writing in Cleveland.