Many Sparrows

A young boy grows up in a small steel town along the Ohio River between 1963 and 1968, while another boy’s suicide overshadows the community. These poems tell their story.

Excerpt from poem titled, Concentric Circles

To know what it feels like
to be suspended between a steel town
and a steel blue sky, I climb.
Perched on the gallows’ branch,

I reach out, touching the remains

of the frayed knot

woven into an abandoned bird’s nest.

Praise for Many Sparrows:

These poems by donnarkevic, emotionally riveting and often deeply disturbing, are pure marvels. Ordinary, conversational speech is entwined with powerful symbols and indelible historical images, to create work that is nothing short of revelatory.

Dr. Sandy Vrana, Professor Emerita Alderson Broaddus University, West Virginia