A Parliament of Owls in the Jefferson Memorial by Deborah Bacharach

The owls have launched a gospel choir in
Jefferson’s arms. No doubt, the sound a dream.
Marble takes the low notes, unspools delicate
ribbons around the imperious, sends moon beams
through the mud, the battered fences
of America. The owls are not supposed
to be here perched on the president’s head
but who can shoo away Zowie composed
as a lighthouse over this tangled world. And grand
Kazowie and Sizzles, their wings lifted on the wind
of His justice cannot sleep forever? Who won’t stand
back for Snow and Lore, fierce talons dug in
to all men shall be free? Who doesn’t want more
Oh Freedom in the dome that has no door?

Deborah Bacharach is the author of Shake and Tremor (Grayson Books, 2021) and After I Stop Lying (Cherry Grove Collections, 2015). She has been published in Vallum, Poet Lore, and The Southampton Review among many other journals. She is an editor and tutor in Seattle.

Guest Editor, Joan Kwon Glass (she/her) is the biracial, Korean American author of NIGHT SWIM, winner of the 2021 Diode Editions Book Contest, & is author of three chapbooks. Joan is the Editor in Chief of Harbor Review, a Brooklyn Poets mentor, poet laureate of Milford, CT, a Connecticut Office of the Arts Artists Respond grantee & poetry co-editor of West Trestle Review. A proud Smith College graduate, she has been a public school educator for 20 years. Her poems have appeared in Diode, Rattle, South Florida Poetry Journal, & many others. She grew up in Michigan & South Korea & lives in Connecticut with her family.

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