Listen to Jo Bear read “After the Gulls” from Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25).
About this poem: In Ireland, where I lived for several years, a town called Balbriggan is the only place in the country that has been given permission to cull its seagull population. On a national level, the gulls are protected, but Balbriggan was able to successfully lobby for an exemption to address the severity of the conflicts between gulls and town residents. While doing further research, I learned that gulls intentionally return to the same nest year after year; they return to a place of familiarity to rear their family, regardless of what may have been built around them in the meantime. This policing of migration—the natural movement of the living world—struck me as drawing instructive and alarming parallels to the processes through which fear leads to the dehumanization and disappearance of bodies deemed expendable in pursuit of the false promise of safety.
Jo Bear is a poet, scholar, and educator with an MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University and an MA in Drama and Performance Studies from University College Dublin. They are a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2023 Zoeglossia Fellow. Their poems appear or are forthcoming in ONLY POEMS, The Adroit Journal, The Offing, Shō Poetry Journal, West Branch, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere.