The Creation of the Birds

by Lorraine Schein After the Remedios Varo painting ​

The feathered avian goddess siphons liquid starlight streaming from the high window focused through a prism onto her worktable. Her ovum plant assistant extends a helpful tendril that holds a pollination palette. She brushes spectral pigments onto the emerged feathers of sprouted fledglings daubs their budding wings with dappled light to germinate the ripening birds and blossom them with flight. Then she plucks the lute in her heart to also conjure their song proudly watching as they chirp and flutter through her window toward the evolving sky.

Lorraine Schein is a New York writer and poet. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Strange Horizons, NewMyths and Mermaids Monthly, and in the anthologies, Wild Women and Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath. The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry book, is available from Mayapple Press. Her new book, The Lady Anarchist Cafe, is out now from Autonomedia.