News Says
       

Scientists hotwire pigeon,
electrodes to brain to wings to silicon sky

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"And with a silken thread plucks it back again"

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for love is finer as its pain evolves.

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Veer back on the red-eye,
unbutton my body
              stuffed with spells

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and I emerge, thick with creatures,
elephants rise and wave their kerchiefs...

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What you long for most
I make you forget.

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What you long for most I can't make you forget,
afloat at your body's ceiling,
watching yourself jog west,

no, east, pick up comb and run it
your hair backwards through,
and not sure you're what
you think
you think
you would have first slipped on the ring

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but there you are playing violin
and not tuba
phrasing audience, you magnificent
polyglot, you fluent in cardinal, crow, chickadee

*

you're raised up, untucked,
bed unmade but not
by your hand, who was that
crumpling sheets, and what am I?
I would be yours, you think,
but someone's calling,
you want to sit on the bed's edge
and kiss my hip, but the house is far
away, you're blocked out by roof,
told to sear wind,
perch on a cloudy branch,
you're told the stone instructions,
to raise your pigeon voice and sing,
sing this tremulous cloister of sky.

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Copyright © 2011 Stacie Leatherman All rights reserved
from Stranger Air
Mayapple Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission