For a Coming Extinction

1 Minute Read Time

A red-tailed hawk in flight with wings outstretched and only sky in the background — Photo by Vijayalakshmi Nidugondi on Unsplash

What if we are birds?
Does that mean we also stand
on wires, tenderly, weightless.
Are we in front of
or behind the red-tailed hawk?
The last bird must watch us die.

Victoria Chang

Victoria Chang’s poetry books include With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2024), The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon, 2022), and OBIT (Copper Canyon, 2020). Her children’s books include Is Mommy? (Beach Lane Books, 2015), illustrated by Marla Frazee; and Love, Love (Sterling, 2020), a middle-grade novel. She serves as the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech.

Return to top of page

Search