White Psalm

by Alan DeNiro

Originally published on July 1, 1997

I’m writing this on a napkin that hopes to be a bird, somehow. And not a swan but a tern, white soot flecking past the ropes of sails in a port. The inky swan, night, lingers close, and waits to pull its hood and drawstring. Can terns fly blind? I scribble farther on this thin [...]