The Sweat Bird

Photo by Julie Gentry
by Christy Bailes

Drought-rain slips
off the predator
until five-hundred wet
pounds make him
stand ground, spread

like a picked-apart fan.
Yellow beads turn
his oily, spiked head,
as I fly past, sweating
ocean salt; it runs

like interrupted feathers
pulled from God’s
washing machine,
that dries now
in cellophane sun.

Category: Poetry, SNHU Creative Writing, SNHU online creative writing, SNHU Student