Carine Topal

{The Crows of Dresden}
My mother dreaded anything with a beak. Eagles and doves no exception. When the windows were open and a house sparrow flew in, she ran. Ran for the door, the fields out front and the forest behind our house. The earth filled with feathers. My mother fretted. She shuddered with coughs. I ran to soothe her, but in her head, birds circled, flocks conspired. Any head-under-wing left Mother open-jawed: the raven, the hawk, even the black-capped chickadee, with its common coo-coo. I yelled for Father who came with a broom. Mother flailed her arms like a wide-winged fowl. I held her and whispered: The black crows of Dresden are gone. The dark- beaked creatures on Hȕbner Strasse, picking at bits of Jews. The men in long coats and black boots marching on a street you once knew of as home. All gone.
Carine Topal’s work has appeared in The Best of the Prose Poem, Greensboro Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Lily, and many other journals and anthologies. “Bed of Want,” her 2nd collection, won the 2007 Robert G. Cohen Prose Poetry Award. She is the recipient of the 2015 Briar Cliff Review Award for Poetry. Her prize-winning book, Tattooed, won the Palettes and Quills Chapbook contest. Topal’s 5th collection, “In Order of Disappearance,” was published in 2018 by Pacific Coast Poetry Series. She teaches poetry and memoir workshops in Southern California.