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A Little Song

BY KATHLEEN RADIGAN

 

Wesleyan University, ’17
2016 Adroit Prize for Poetry: Editors’ List

Because crickets’ throats dry up
like dunes unless they sing, the rest of us
must listen to white whistling.
All summer, petals of paint snap
off the porch steps.  The sky slides
open.  Pauses slip onto the grass.
My sister and I try breathing
without sound.

The porch feels our breath
on its neck.  It sighs
back and wind whines in our hollows.
My heart’s heat thunder. Our
ears to the sky.
Listening to stars’ quiet piles of light.
We sit and chirp for birds on power lines.
We’ll probably both be lonely for a long time.

Kathleen Radigan is an English major at Wesleyan University, where she recently received the English Department’s Sophie Reed Prize for Poetry. Last year, she was selected to publish a chapbook, You Guys are the Best Listeners (April 2015), with Stethoscope Press. In 2013, she was named a National YoungArts Finalist for Poetry, U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts semi-finalist, and also received a Gold Medal for Writing Portfolio from the National Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her poem “Love Poem for Scarecrow” was selected for the 2013 Adroit Prize for Poetry Editors’ List, and was nominated for inclusion in Plain China: Best Undergraduate Writing Anthology. Her poems can be found in The Harpoon Review, The Best Teen Writing 2013, PANK, Atrocity Exhibition and several other publications.