The Birds

* * * A poem should have birds. All of them are mimics, opera singers, warriors. Pure spirit. From my deck I see a dove pace circles around a pit…

        I The Abaco National Park on the south end of Great Abaco in the Bahamas is twenty thousand acres of pine flats and a slender scrubby…

Gray sheets, grime, chill of metal. Smell of ancient burned toast. What’s a home anyway? Outside, a nest fallen from the tree whose roots heave the sidewalk. Why doesn’t the…

melon light fracturing mosaic of birds or bats, obsolete telephone wires; debris along dusk, husks in a wild field bordering a house lit angular, Hitchcock. what is/are the root(s) of…

I watch one hundred Cedar Waxwings drunk on berry ink write in cursive all the scripts of the world. They graffiti the sky, the trees, the roofs with syllabaries, abjads…

Future Weather or Beside the State Capital There’s a history that I’ve known and neglected for torment that can’t be let go. There are song birds that throw their voices…

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if…

I was minding my own business when the first crow attacked. It swooped down like a precision drone and clawed me right where my receding hairline begins. It wasn’t exactly…

1. I saw… I saw an ant pitta near Papallacta. I saw a mot mot near Mindo I heard an owl in Seattle What we love barely exists I was…

And Birds It’s not that hard to write a poem, what’s hard is to write a really good poem. You have to translate the undulates. To render, glean. To peck…

Trigger Warning: This piece contains physical abuse.     The Dove found the first patch of land, conveniently located next to a gas station, hours into her flight, miles away…

by Iulia Militaru / Translated from the Romanian by Claudia Serea   1. Introduction Birds are made of innocent but half-witted men who showed interest in heavenly matters, but who…

Noted / again on / this morning’s walk In flight, pelicans are graceful but they land awk- wardly, as if afraid water will not support them.     Woken once…

Twas our forte to pass for this, Proper sack of sense to borrow, Wings and legs, and bills that clatter, And the horizon of To-morrow. – The Flight of the…