• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MAYDAY

  • Culture
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • Nonfiction
    • Contests
  • Translation
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • About
    • Submit
      • Contests
      • Contest Winners
      • MAYDAY:Black
    • Open Positions
    • Masthead
    • Contributors

A Dovecote at a Medieval Manor House Ruin in Oxfordshire
by Stephen Gibson

July 8, 2020 Contributed By: Stephen Gibson

 

Two workers were repairing it the day we visited—

one worker passing thatch to one on a ladder;

our friend Judy, a photographer, said

this was a favorite place for her:

the dovecote once bred

 

pigeons and doves for the dinner table: chambers

inside—when the manor house was inhabited—

filled with squabs and bird mating-pairs.

What happened?  Why had it ended?

The two workers repairing

 

the dovecote now weren’t doing this for some heirs—

but a heritage foundation: all of the heirs were dead.

Judy took a photo of my wife, me, and her

with the two workers.

 

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: July 8, 2020

Further Reading

GNOMIC SAVIORS: EDITORS ON EDITING – WHAT HAPPENS TO LIT MAGS IN A RECESSION?

Okla Elliott: Everyone is talking about the current economic situation in the US.  How is this affecting literary journals, and what are the solutions you’ve found? Jodee Stanley (Ninth Letter): I think the economy has got us all biting our nails, looking over our shoulders. I’m interested to hear what independent journals have to say about the […]

OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI; MIDSUMMER by Emily M. Green

1 I get a job at Security Check, answering phones. They give me a cubicle and a headset. The air conditioning makes my leg hair grow faster. 2 I take Spanish translation to fulfill a graduate school language requirement and break up with Eduardo. He offers to look over my assignments anyway. 3 Five nights […]

Taking on the Environmental Crisis, One Painting At a Time: An Interview with Lauren Matsumoto
by Aya Kusch

Lauren Matsumoto is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work touches on one of the most urgent crises facing humanity today: environmental degradation. Through her gorgeous, brilliantly executed paintings, which involve flora, birds, and vintage ephemera, she beautifully illuminates the fissures that have formed between humans and nature. In this fascinating interview, Matsumoto shares her insights on […]

Primary Sidebar

Recently Published

  • Caterpillar by Dragana Mokan
    translated from the Serbian by John K. Cox
  • Year-End Wrap-Up: The MAYDAY Editors’ Books of the Year, 2022
  • Warrior
    by Lane Falcon
  • Inside the Kaleidoscope
    by Jane O. Wayne
  • Two Poems by Luis Alberto de Cuenca
    translated from the Spanish by Gustavo Pérez Firmat

Trending

  • Eight Contemporary Female Irish Artists to Fall In Love With Immediately
    by Aya Kusch
  • Year-End Wrap-Up: The MAYDAY Editors’ Books of the Year, 2022
  • Sellouts 1970: Love Story: The Year a Screenplay-Turned-Novel Almost Broke the National Book Award
    by Kirk Sever
  • George Saunders on A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
    by Brianna Di Monda
  • I Know Who Orville Peck Is
    by Robin Gow
  • Warrior
    by Lane Falcon
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Business


Reprint Rights
Privacy Policy
Archive

Engage


Open Positions
Donate
Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · New American Press

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.