CALL IT ACCIDENT by Monique Wentzel

Call It Accident

Call it midnight thump and boom.
Gumbo lockdown.

Call up gush;
swirl and spread.

Forward moving call it stalled.
Call a party, crown petroleum queen.

On call the creeping,
race for land.

Call it caught

drifting

in a starless sea.

Long-billed or swell-bellied, sway in the bilge.
Call it quits—trolled, talked-down.

Roll call: Plover, Egret, Tern.
Shrimp estuaries and pelican rookeries.

Songbirds who “I used to come here from America.”
Call it marshes packed in greed.

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Monique Wentzel lives in Portland, Oregon where she is pursuing an MFA in fiction writing. This is her first published poem.