Heavy Lead Birdsong by Ryler Dustin

Ryler Dustin's Heavy Lead Birdsong has a habit of taking a left turn exactly when you think you know where a poem is headed.

One minute you're reading about an orchard growing inside someone's chest. The next, you're following angels through boxcar graffiti or riding into the Ice Age. Somehow, it all makes perfect sense. These poems are weird and deeply moving in the best way. They're funny, imaginative, rich, and beautifully rendered, transcending contemporary politics to find something truer. Shattering the confines of convention by moving through science and religion, Dustin is a voice of his times.

Read this one when the world feels heavy.

If I believed in angels,
they’d be the ones
who wouldn’t
go
back.

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Ryler Dustin grew up in Bellingham, Washington, where he met the friends who introduced him to poetry and continue to inspire him. A finalist of both the Ruth Lilly Prize and the Individual World Poetry Slam, his work bridges the gaps between people to celebrate the common strangeness of being.