Photograph of Rocco, Age 4, Head Bowed Over a Chick’s Skulless Body

by Jo Blair Cipriano

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His hands, pink and milky, the alien 
chick so alarmingly naked. The yard next to ours 

littered with cloth and wood 
and boxspring—all diagonal in the grass. A tear

suspended between cheek-fat and the featherless
bulge in his palm. Because we are children, 

Rocco and I plead to move our beds 
outside like the family next-door, 

wake to squirrels tunneling through rosemary. 
That night when police come, there’s no need 

for me to scream. Not yet. Rocco isn’t shoved face-to
-ground, cuffs and blood tangling

behind him. We are safe in bed 
while our parents calculate 

what’s left. Our only grief 
is the injustice of a tiny creature’s life 

cut short. It isn’t too late.  In the photo,
Rocco is four; I can’t find myself. 

In the photo, mosquito larvae pool in a dent
in the concrete. The street thirsts

for the skin from our knees. We are happy. 
Our parents are together. Rocco’s hands 

are unchangeably gentle. 
Unbruised. We bury a bird.

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Jo Blair Cipriano is from Hyattsville, Maryland. They are the 2023 winner of an Academy of American Poets Prize, and have received support from Tin House, the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Brooklyn Poets. A former college dropout, Jo is now an MFA candidate at the University of Arizona, where they are a 2023 Southwest Field Studies in Writing fellow.