Brain | Suzanne Grenoble/'Bird'

Brain | Suzanne Grenoble/'Bird'

Perverse organ:
If you lose an arm,
A leg,
A breast–
Are you still you?
Yes.
Forgetting your lines,
You exit the stage
Muttering nonsense,
      Ghostly:
Are you still you?
       Mostly.
– I say; ‘broccoli?”
No.  Head shake.
“Celery?”  Head shake.
“Asparagus?”
He points to the garden, green feathers emerging from snow.
No.
I open the vegetable drawer.  He points to the cabbage.
I say ‘cabbage.’
He nods and smiles for me.
Wordlets whirl
Decapitated, wild:
Words have weighed anchor;
He  smiles.
Having fled
The ship of insanity
He swims
The sea of inanity.
Are you still there?
He is –
Wanting cole slaw.

Bird writes from Western Massachusetts amid a profusion of houseplants and hope.

Honorable Mentions of the Month
These poems stood out among the submissions we received in March 2026:
• “City Trees” by Gary Beck
• “Survival Instinct” by Raju Vegiraju

~ Selected by Sharisa Aidukaitis

Editor’s Note

With its sparse diction and fragmented movement, “Brain” captures a quiet and unsettling meditation on memory, language, and self. It is subtle in form, but carries a depth that stays beyond the page. 

~ Daniel Aôndona