Jessica
Goodfellow grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and has spent the last 20
years in California, Florida, and Japan. Her first book of poetry, The
Insomniac's Weather Report (Three Candles Press), won the publisher’s First
Book Prize and was reissued by Isobar Press in 2014. She is also the author of
a poetry chapbook, A Pilgrim's Guide to Chaos in the Heartland (Concrete
Wolf, 2006), which won the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Competition. Mayapple Press will
publish her collection Mendeleev’s Mandala in 2015. A recipient of the Chad Walsh Poetry
Prize from the Beloit Poetry Journal, she lives in Japan with her husband and sons. For more about the poet and her
books, see http://www.jessicagoodfellow.com.
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Ostrich, from Picasso: Original Etchings
for the Texts of Buffon, Pablo Picasso, 1936
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Picasso’s Ostrich
The posture of the ostrich will oscillate,
shifting its heft from left to right to left.
What various precarious poses it supposes,
as it wades through space and time,
limbs akimbo, ungainly and inane,
wielding wings not to scale the skies,
not to rise above horizon, but to decelerate
in dirt, anti-thrust; it must disguise its desire
in design absurd for a bird, but divine,
so divine, for an inky line.