Brian Beatty
Modern Bear
If I'm part-bear, it's that part
left in the den after hibernation:
the snore rather than
the growl. The torpor, not the attack.
Maybe I'm what bears dream.
Life as a salmon migrating upstream to spawn
or as a twig of wild berries
would be an improvement most days. At first,
anyway. Mother Nature can be a bitch.
But I'm still her bastard son.
Bio
Brian Beatty's poems have appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Bark, Clementine Poetry Journal,
Conduit, Dark Mountain (England), The Evergreen Review, The Glasgow Review of Books (Scotland), Great Walks (Australia),
Gulf Coast, Hobart, McSweeney's, Midwestern Gothic, The Moth (Ireland), Opium, Paper Darts, Phoebe,
The Quarterly, Seventeen, The Southern Poetry Review and Sycamore Review.
Beatty's the author of the collections Coyotes I Couldn't See (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016) and
Brazil, Indiana (Kelsay Books/Aldrich Press, forthcoming).