Pheasant

Illustration for "Pheasant" by Linda Wojtowick. A green sink against a black and white checkered blacksplash. What appears to be an exposed pink bird tail / wing emerges from a pool of blood in the sink.
I’ll try to explain it, this thing. It seems about more than it is. Once, on a Sunday, my father came home in new dark. He looked like he always did after hunting, like a flapping army covered in tarps. What did you get, I asked. He shouldered through the kitchen with a loping bag. What did he get, I asked my mother, who said a word: fezn. Or fenz? I didn’t know what that was. All the animals I knew rumpled through my little mind. What is it? I asked again. I craned on tiptoes. Whatever it was it was a thing in a sink, a wet pink thing. A fessing. Later I would think all of this was reckless or corrupt, letting me go on like that. It could have been so easily answered had someone said bird. Ground bird.

I’ll try to explain it, this thing. It seems 

about more than it is. Once, on a Sunday, 

my father came home in new dark. He looked

like he always did after hunting, like a flapping 

army covered in tarps. What did you get, I asked. 

He shouldered through the kitchen with a loping bag.

What did he get, I asked my mother, who said a word: fezn. 

Or fenz? I didn’t know what that was. All the animals I knew

rumpled through my little mind. What is it? I asked again. 

I craned on tiptoes. Whatever it was it was a thing 

in a sink, a wet pink thing. A fessing. Later I would think 

all of this was reckless or corrupt, letting me go on 

like that. It could have been so easily answered 

had someone said bird. Ground bird.

Linda is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and has had poetry recommended for the Best of the Net Anthology. She is co-creator and writer of the podcast The Ghosts on This Road. Her poem Wendigo appeared in Bloodletter Issue Two: Phantoms, and more recently her work has also snuck itself into Cathexis Northwest Press and The Collidescope.