Jesuit School Fountain Ravens

By JOHN DAVIS JR.

Some descended from the arms
of our chapel cross, while lower
brothers abandoned statues
to bathe and drink at the heart
of our campus. Here, this flock
is no congress, no murder—
too innocent for such names.

Playful as cardinals, they splash
and sing on the lip of a bowl
overflowing. A great gather
of lustrous, fluffing feathers,
others could mistake them for ducks
or sleeker geese throwing water
in joyful, wing-beating triumph.

No longer ominous, they
foreshadow glee and liberty
of a coming summer when
students less uniform arrange
themselves into carefree circles
of chatter and rough-house, unbound
from studies’ dark gravity.

 

John Davis Jr. is the author of The Places That Hold, Middle Class American Proverb, and three other poetry collections. His work has appeared in Nashville Review, Tampa Review, Salvation South, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA and teaches English in Tampa, Florida.

[Purchase Issue 27 here.] 

Jesuit School Fountain Ravens

Related Posts

Glass: Five Sonnets

MONIKA CASSEL
In ’87 I see guardsmen walk their AK-47s / on the platforms. The trains slow down but never stop. I think, / my mother was born in such a different Germany, but this is true for everyone / —so why can’t I stop looking?

cover of "Civilians"

On Civilians: Victoria Kelly Interviews Jehanne Dubrow

JEHANNE DUBROW
Now we live in North Texas, hours away from the nearest shore. And yet, the massive amounts of open space—all the prairie, marsh, and plains that we have here—started to feel like another kind of vast water, another great expanse of distance and isolation.

Lizard perched on a piece of wood.

Poems in Tutunakú and Spanish by Cruz Alejandra Lucas Juárez

CRUZ ALEJANDRA LUCAS JUÁREZ
Before learning to walk / and before I’d fallen upon the wet earth / already my heart hummed in three tones. / Even when my steps were still clumsy, / I already held three consciousnesses. // Long before my baptism, / already my three nahuals were running