it was the worst birthday present ever:
a cardinal in a
clear glass box. unless
it was a blackbird or
some sort of baby crow--
you couldn't see it from the
wall of mist its tiny feathery breath
built brick by puffy brick
on the glass.
no card, by the way.
only birdsong at the doorstep
at some godforsaken clocks-must-be-bleary hour
next to the
sound of the emerging dawn.
there were no air holes, but
Bird (his name)
kept living on pockets of nothing
nevertheless,
chirping through the plates
despite the cage.
weird.
though he was kind of pretty in his
own limited way--
the way I heard him try to sing
with the others
when I placed him
by the open window
and the look on his face like
he was made of gold enameling
and loved the world for it
so one day I pulled his liberator
out of my father's old tool kit and
carefully cracked the top.
and there was a rush of
air or death or
something like that
and when he breathed in
the first day of his life
all he could do
was dissolve,
slowly,
particle by particle,
until he was ash
and I buried him
with the rest
under the flowers
6 comments:
I don't have any articulate comment -- but, I really like this. A lot.
More to come (maybe).
Hurrah for inarticulacy?
Ok, so yeah, well, I really love this poem.
I like the stanza about the singing - making him pretty in a "limited" way, how the bird can connect with other birds, but then again not really. I like how the tool used to break the glass is called "his liberator". The vocabulary is airy, dreamy, like the concept of the half-seen bird in a glass case.
I think the strength of the poem is in the speaker. There's something youthfully naive about him, but at the same time childishly whimsical. It could have fallen into a kind of singsong "look at that bird, it's so cute, let's free it", but no, instead it's this troubling lack of understanding, an inherent awkwardness, which works wonderfully well. And of course, all the negation in the first stanzas: "worst birthday present ever", "no card", "no hair holes".
So yeah, I really liked it.
Different from your other works.
But how great your work is never sways. nicely done.
I must agree with the others and say that this was very much wonderful, I really loved it. The narrative was great and wasn't how I was expecting it to go, figuring it was more like how Charles said it would be - "oh let's free the cute bird". I thought the ending was really strong in particular, although I liked it in its entirety.
The only thing I have to say that is anything less than positive is the voice perhaps? I know Charles said the narrator is the strength and I do think that's true but I found the flow of the poem was a little stunted when you threw in the colloquialisms of "by the way" and "weird". Maybe it's just because I'm used to your more sophisticated poetry and now that you try something more whimsical I'm just not used to it. Anyway, I would try perhaps for for a more consistently whimsical voice, or cut down on your fancy words/expressions elsewhere.
But other than that I love it, I really do. There were so many great images, like how the cage gets fogged up from the bird's breath, and the the whole end I could picture really clearly - the wave of air blowing out of the box and the bird slowly shrivelling. It was awesome and heartbreaking - a perfect combination, how I see it :)
I agree, Marta. I think I'll modify that in subsequent versions of the poem...
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