Paradisus Avium, by Anthony Mittal

Poetry, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Paradisus Avium is a Parisian bestiary of lyric vignettes—part fever-diary, part field guide, part incantation. Across strobe-lit nightclubs, bustling sidewalks, and ancient forests shrouded in fog, birds become omens and witnesses: crows stitching the city’s black halo, pigeons lingering like forgotten monks, an owl who holds the night in his eyes.

Woven with recurring refrains and talismanic phrases, these poems explore memory, tenderness, and the exquisite agony of being reborn. A direct but quiet nod to mediaeval legends and allegories, this chapbook is a handmade relic of youth in the City of Love—excessive, intimate, and haunted by the shadows of wings.

Anthony Mittal is an American poet splitting time between rural Wisconsin and Paris. His work is forthcoming in Prosetrics: The Literary Magazine, Beyond Words Magazine, Eunoia Review, and Luna Rossa Anthologie 2026. He writes across English and French and is drawn to hybrid forms, mythic recurrence, and the resonant intimacy of place. He is the author of the manuscript-length projects Winterroot: Songs of Stone and Silence and La Flamme Mouillée.