

Migration
I'm greeting the arrival
of a bright-eyed yellow bird.
The bird is a canary,
known for its beautiful song.
She nestles in my chest,
sings a story of abandonment
and misplaced faith. She sings
of lost moments, of a union
so intense it brought tears
to the eye. The bird doesn't cry,
only sings a steady tune
in the early morning hours.
Cheer up, the bird chirps.
For don't you know
that all summer long
I will be your boon companion?
In the long, light-filled days ahead,
I will stay with you,
nesting near your heart,
returning each day
with scavenged bits of hair
and silken thread, building
a nest amidst the bone branches
of your ribs. And when
the autumn light turns pink
and the days begin to shorten
and chill, I will crack open
your sternum like a hull
and fly away, taking all
of your sorrow with me,
spreading it over the ocean's
surface, flying and flying
until I find a green island
in the middle of clearest blue,
and there in the center
of the tallest palm, I will stop,
I will nose my stiff beack
into the ruffle and plume
of sequined golden feathers,
and rest, swaying
and sparkling in the midday sun.
Fever
The heat of your small body
pulsed waves of worry
through shallow dreams, woke me again
and again. Your cheeks flushed
an unholy pink, the skin
of your lips swelled and shiny, scorched
by some inner violence.
When you woke
your vacant eyes regarded me
from some newly indifferent shore
found me praying you would
make your way, would pull me back
from this unforgiving edge
of mother-love.
Ryan Adams
Gorgeous words
wheedled in harsh tones,
the shock of bangs
grown perfectly long, to the end
of his pointy, turned up nose.
So ridiculously gifted
it makes you want to cry. Hiding
while playing in full view,
behind a guitar and piano,
or out in front, his muscled legs
in tight jeans straining
toward the microphone.
“I don’t think
I’d fuck any of you,” he spits
from the stage
at our upturned faces.
The suburban audience
surveys him warily, too cowed
to tell him
we wouldn’t fuck him either,
or to tell him (politely)
to Go fuck himself.
He should be dead
all the clichéd problems
with drink and drugs,
but he survived
to be here tonight, oozing superiority
from every pore, hipster sarcasm
spraying the front row,
his youthful, stupid, blind genius
like a hard white light
shining out from the darkened stage
and so
like the indulgent parents we are
we forgive him everything.
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