The Pigeons

By Katey Linskey

Issue 48 • Fall 2023 • Poetry

To Picasso’s Les Pigeons, Cannes 1957

You, rare as rain in Barcelona.
Painted pigeons on the patio.
Mediterranean spring, citrus

and salt. Oil and smog
on the Diagonal. Heat fissures
the sky. We rush to pull the wash

from the line, rush to unmake
the taut bed, rush of blood, hard
against my mouth. You, ordinary as

waking to sweat-soaked sheets
on the shoulder of summer.
The rented attic in Poble Nou.

Cheap & hot. And yes—
I want you to do what
you think I want you to do.

At the museum, we each find
a favorite painting and ask the other
to guess. For me it’s not the painting

but the promise of a balcony view
to look out at the sea together.
You, rare as the last blooming lily

of the bunch. A reason to save
the flowers for a few more days.
A second climax. You, ordinary

as gravity. Turkish coffee grounds
settling to the bottom of a lilac
glass. You, rare as daytime honesty.

A beer sweats onto a maroon tablecloth
between us. The air hums with the
indecipherable chatter of other couples.

Katey Linskey

Katey Linskey is a writer with poetry out and forthcoming in The West Review, Emerson Review, The McNeese Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Cobra Milk and elsewhere. She spent eight years working in public health which continues to inform her work as a writer.

Ana Prundaru

Ana Prundaru was born in Romania and presently lives in Switzerland. Alongside her legal career, she writes and illustrates for publications like Fugue, the Pinch, Third Coast, New Letters and North Dakota Quarterly.