Museum Crows
Poems by Ron Houchin

Crows punctuate our lives like dark exclamations. They land and watch from fence post, rooftop, and field. Their occurrence brings a form of awareness. Whether they appear as sentinels for those areas we may feel reluctance to peer into or as spectres of the unexpected, they embody the harsh and the beautiful, evoking the recurring moments of our lives. This collection, interspersed with its metaphorical black birds, looks also to summon such moments.

Ron Houchin taught in the public school system of the Appalachian region of southernmost Ohio for thirty years. Raised on the remote banks of the Ohio River in Huntington, West Virginia, he has travelled throughout Europe, Canada, and the U.S. His work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, The Southwest Review, Appalachian Heritage, The New Orleans Review, and over two hundred other venues. He has been awarded an Ohio Arts Council Grant for teachers of the arts, a tutorial fellowship to teach in a Dublin, Ireland, writing workshop, a poetry prize from Indiana University, as well as a book of the year award from the Appalachian Writers’ Association. His poems have been featured on Verse Daily. This is his third collection from Salmon Poetry.