Ben Cooper

At Least I’m Giving You the Birds

You left before I could finish
you, tapped your shoe on the rug

three times on your way out
the door, then scattered

with the wind. I saw you miming
the swallows. The breeze was carrying them

home again and again. I almost always find myself
reaching for those scraps, for something

I can still remember. To make it easier. Perhaps
to kill the part of me that knows

I have no other choice. Language, too, is
a failure—like everything, too delicate

to be observed. Even the most precise word
pales to birds, pales to wind.

Ben Cooper is a poet studying creative writing at Salisbury University. He is the winner of the 2025 AWP Intro Journals Award, works as a Managing Editor at 149 Review, and is published or forthcoming in Colorado Review, The Penn Review, The Shore, Atlanta Review, Saranac Review, Frontier Poetry, and more.