Calculation with Women as Birds in Post-Roe America
Stefanie Kirby
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An egg in the hand is worth more than an egg in the tree,
which is worth more than the basket of shattered eggs.
There are no birds in this problem. No birds laying eggs.
No birds inside eggs that were laid. No birds in the trees.
No birds in your hands. Consider the eggs the birds left.
Consider how eggs replace birds. Count what you have
shattered, then find the worth of each missing bird.
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Stefanie Kirby is the author of Fruitful (Driftwood Press, 2024), winner of the Adrift Chapbook Contest; Remainder (Bull City Press, 2025); and Opening, forthcoming from Glass Poetry Press. Her poetry appears in Best of the Net, West Branch, Pleiades, Massachusetts Review, Cincinnati Review, Four Way Review, and elsewhere. She lives along Colorado’s Front Range with her family.
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Posted in Universal Language July '25 and tagged in #boudin, #poetry