Seagull Church
We’re on our way home when my attention is drawn to a church parking lot where an enormous group of seagulls gathers like a sheet of snow in the dead of August, stark white like clean, pressed shirts, speckled gray and black like neckties. Seagulls in Sunday best. Pastor Seagull behind a podium in front of its hungry flock. Seagulls kneeling at pews with their toe-walking, tree-twig legs. Seagulls whose souls release both joyful and anguished prayers from the tips of beaks.
Prayers that flitter into the sticky, sweat-sweet air and are carried on sacred wind to God.
April Lynn DeOliveira is a Michigan-based writer, educator, and editor-in-chief of Cereal City Review. She has been published in Fiction on the Web, Walloon Writers Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review, Front Porch Republic, Great Lakes Review, Defenestrationism.net, and others. When she is not feverishly pecking away on her tablet, she can be found reading, gardening, traversing Michigan and beyond with her wonderful husband, and wishing she weren’t allergic to cats.
Amethyst Review 
Dear Sarah, I love this poem! I spent most of the summer listening to the various sounds of the seagulls and watching their wonderful parenting skills (there is a nest on my chimney). I even videoed one on the lamppost to make my bereaved brother laugh (hahahaha). Some mornings they sounded so happy flying in the sky and sometimes so angry -‘joyful and anguished’ the poem put it perfectly. I have been going to write a poem for months…. Hope you are well, and happy feast day of St Therese today! Best and warmest Jane
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