Dawn Pendergast lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, two hours from Atlanta. She holds two masters degrees, one from NYU and one from the University of Arizona. Her poems are published online in various journals including Little Red Leaves, Coconut, Alice Blue, Dusie, and Intercapillary/Space, and she blogs at whatbirdsgiveup.com. Her poems have been selected by Dan Beachy-Quick for an Academy of American Poets Prize and by Olga Broumas for the Will Inman Award.
I started changing my life. A DIY project I could really follow through. I was a grackle for a million years and I flew down from my grackle nest and there was a drill bit to drill the pilot holes. A gate edge I perched on some new thing entirely flecked with chiseled matter and level as the frame. I hammered into the perch a rune to mark a position for quarter-inch screws. I scraped into it a mysterious misnomer and drilled pilot holes and begged a carte postale to make me known, the alignment of my credit due. I feigned indifference to the sweating brow. Screwed up tight. Made feckless alignment good. God gave me this brow. On it sweats a golden age. I will take this city and make it smooth and round. What city? Must have been a map error. There are no rules for how you choose the numbered bolts. Out here there is so little but ground and empty cellar and many leagues to any sober mind. The meter clumpy. The earth spongy. Having these things texturized helps the feet to guide the wobbling torso. Door edge. Gut strings. Door bolt. Dinosaur flashes of a deep deep brave.