Magpies by Annick MacAskill

Poet name: Annick MacAskill Poem title: Magpies Poem: Remarkable to our east coast eyes, quotidian pest to the locals. You say beautiful and spark derision, their eyebrows raised like pinkie fingers and the corners of their mouths twitching. Rarer still to us all these months later, as memory, relegated to our respective crevices of Canada. A pest, this distance, this longing. In memory, the birds’ sleek feathers are still glossy in sunshine— inky checkmarks against the whiteness of the sky, the mountains—their wings and tails iridescent, pulsing against the limits of spectrum, rippling our vision into mirage. You still say beautiful with conviction. The world won’t know what to make of us either. End of poem. Credits: Copyright © Annick MacAskill Originally published in Murmurations (Gaspereau Press, 2020) Annick MacAskill's debut collection, No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018), was selected as a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the J.M. Abraham Award, and named a knife fork book 2018 pick. Her second collection is Mumurations (Gaspereau Press, Spring 2020). She lives and writes in Halifax.