T. Clear's Website

Over her lifetime, Seattle poet T. Clear has always wanted more pets than only cats, dogs, hamsters, gerbils, and goldfi sh. In 2017 she made the decision to become a backyard chicken wrangler when she acquired three hens; and over the course of the next fi ve years, added three more to her fl ock. Th is chicken obsession ended with their untimely demise in 2022 by an unidentifi ed predator..

Over the past 50 years, her work has appeared in many publications, including The American Journal of Poetry, Anti- Heroin Chic, Atlanta Review, Bayou, Bellingham Review, Cirque Journal, Common Ground Review, Crab Creek Review, Crannóg, Dunes Review, In Parentheses, Iron Horse Literary Review, Lily Poetry, The Mayo News, The Moth, Poetry Northwest, Raven Chronicles, Red Earth Review, The Rise Up Buses Project, Seattle Review, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, South Florida Poetry Journal, Tab Journal, Terrain.org, Thimble Literary Magazine, UCity Review, The Wax Paper, and What Rough Beast.

She’s a founder of Floating Bridge Press and currently is an associate editor for Bracken Magazine.

COOP REPAIRS

Mud underfoot like a rat
too many days dead in the alley.
Th e hens hold their feathers close
to the skin, not an inch of dry ground
and this rain, without mercy.

Plastic sheeting stapled against chicken wire
makes a quick job of keeping the wet out
before the wind lashes me sideways,
my parka useless in the torrent.
An armload of fresh straw and I’m done.

Not a bad place to sleep, I think,
nested snug in a shipping-pallet hut,
elbowed-in with chickens. No one will notice
my wings, withered where they once sprouted,
folded carefully out of sight.

Table

Not an island, not an isthmus
or a spit. Not a peninsula.
The kitchen table is a land mass
untethered to the vinyl floor,
prone to slippage if it weren’t
for the lumbered-mass of it.
Built waist high, meant for larger tools
than a whisk, a spatula, a cooling rack.
Meant for a saw, hammer, drill.
Raw-edged planks, no fussy trim.
Wrestled up the basement steps
and put into service
after a decade of disuse.
Long enough to lay out a dead man
on a cloth, if there was need.
Or a woman.
Long enough to lay out 30 pies.