DEAR CANARIES, 

Thank you for sending the sparrow
emissary

to remind me of space
and to encourage light.

I miss your singing
voices and consequently mornings.

Routine
is now too much about myself. The cage

sits there.         Insists that I’m an animal.
That I need to travel.

First appeared in Superstition Review, and soon to appear in the anthology, Queer Nature 

Kevin McLellan is the author of Hemispheres (Fact-Simile Editions, forthcoming), [box] (Letter [r] Press, 2016), Tributary (Barrow Street, 2015), and Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and Gival Press’ 2016 Oscar Wilde Award, and his poems have appeared in numerous journals including: American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, West Branch, Western Humanities Review, and Witness.Kevin lives in Cambridge MA.