October 16, 2008
BIRDHOUSE
| KRISTINE ONG MUSLIM |
The imaginary nest has long been overtaken by worms, which the birds have plucked from the soil. Severed, the worms have finally learned to grow more of themselves out of each cut sustained from the bird’s beak.
It is not enough to be many. It is not enough to be regurgitated and to multiply in the predator’s gut until it splits open. Perhaps someday the worms will have wings as well.
And how they presented themselves to the swooping birds, how their tiny breaths enrich the soil, how they willed the birds to shear off their soft bodies off the ground.
More than six hundred of Kristine Ong Muslim’s work have appeared or are forthcoming in over three hundred publications worldwide. Her stories and poems have appeared in Aberrant Dreams, Abyss & Apex, Cemetery Moon, Dark Recesses Press, Dog Versus Sandwich, Down in the Cellar, Fear and Trembling, GUD Magazine, Kaleidotrope, Niteblade, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Spinning Whorl, Tales of the Talisman, and Trail of Indiscretion. She has received several Honorable Mentions in Year’s Best in Fantasy and Horror as well as nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Rhysling Award and won Sam’s Dot Publishing’s James Award for genre poetry twice.