what really happened to the last ivory billed woodpecker by Vivienne Strauss; for more information, visit http://www.viviennestrauss.com

Listening to an Audio Recording of an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker in a Walmart Parking Lot

After C.A. Conrad

by Derek Berry

even the produce aisle becomes a museum of extinct birds,
their ecstatic mourning tantrums racket-brash
from football stadium speakers—how else
to recover the reckless animal in us?

press the fossil of a dead sea against your ear, hear only
gunfire
honk-toxic cacophony                         a shovel tasting dirt

About Derek Berry

Derek Berry is the author of the novel ‘Heathens & Liars of Lickskillet County’ (PRA, 2016). They are the co-founder of literary non-profit The Unspoken Word. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in BOAAT Journal, Yemassee, Gigantic Sequins, 8 Poems, & elsewhere. They live in Aiken, South Carolina.