passerines and taxidermy by mckenzie mcdonald

​i.
teeth on gum, grinding. on the oc making minty-fresh topography with the wad in between my molars. catch a shadow in the window of a girl fading into frozen under the dyslexic reels of eclipsing terrain. wonder whether there is a word for the shiver as the panorama of landscapes fuses together across the lacquer. or is that the tremor of being torn apart?

ii. 
before every class i wrap a coarse-knit bandage around the cavities that adjoin each appendage. smash my limbs into their sockets & sacrifice a cm of length off each for assurance. my fear is tectonic. maybe that's why i sit so still.

iii. 
ravens have been winking at me all week. googled psychosis then passerines. found that these wooly mammoths among birds are engineered to perch (phalanges arranged to point, three forwards, one back.) do their twig-like toe-knuckles grow as grey as my cold feet worrying about in which direction to fly?

iv. 
it has only been 3 lectures but the pile of smoke-black feathers that litters the ground beneath my feet has disintegrated into gradient plumes of ash. i shed statically, a tropophobic, a tree, a gum-stuck bandage-wrapped bird's-nest effaces my reflection upon the windowpanes of the oc. 

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 Mckenzie McDonald is a 19 year-old poet from Ottawa where she studies Undeclared Arts at Carleton University. Her writing has  appeared in Vagabond City Literary Journal and she is currently working on a Chapbook that explores how fragmented identities are embodied in various mediated spaces. 
https://vagabondcitylit.com/2017/10/05/nuclear-dreams-by-mckenzie-mcdonald/