From the CR: Bats

In honor of the season, Soapbox once again partners with the acclaimed literary journal The Cincinnati Review to offer you a tasty tidbit of poetry. Enjoy Brian Barker’s “Bats,” and read why CR editors fell under its spell.

Bats

They will crawl out of the ashes of cold barbecue pits. Their wings will be cut from the backs of chimney sweeps. They will hang from the antlers of an elk like a congress of drowsy trapeze artists. At dusk above houses, they will appear and disappear and appear, weaving a jagged cotillion through the trees. Their songs will travel before them like aneurysms on strings, shattering streetlights, car alarms, nerves. When winter comes too early, we will see their faces in our frostbitten fruit. Insomniac, they will be your alphabet at the window. Sleeper, they will be the jewelry of your death, tangled in silk pajamas, in a wet beehive of hair.

Read what Barker has to say about this poem along with comments from CR editors about its haunting appeal.