Clothespins on the Line
look like birds. Scrawny
winter birds balanced by two sarong
tail feathers. Some look west,
others north-
east toward the
mountain. Stiff in the cold &
remote. They haven’t been loved
enough. They grow
thinner and thinner in their woody
streaked feathers, held together only by
the exposed spiral of internal
organs. After a while , the sun comes
out and all o f the birds, clutching wire, turn
an electric silver.
This is hopeful,, but doesn’t last. Clouds
take a break from one another , ,
re-
convene. A half-inch of
snow is rolled out with perfect evenness
across the picnic table, as though
someone made a blank
for what was
coming. The nice thing
about clothespin birds is they don’t
“excrete.”
Jays & grosbeaks & finches
& mourning doves + ravens leave
their paintings
everywhere , on benches & limbs ,, , on fallen
pine needle fascicles \|/ feldspar & quartz _ __
though all has now become
gesso beneath snow. After a certain amount of
feeling
hopelessly under-
accomplished, you look at your nails
and want to
paint them. Is this how birds
feel? No. Birds fly
and don’t look
down. Or, they sit `’’ amid branches
and peck at the brittle waffled bark
& tiny bugs buried
in the marrow. .< sszt sszt sszt .< You, too,
peck. Familiar letters on t he keys have lost
their definition and resemble finger-
tip-size daubs of bird paint on back-
lit platforms. You recall the s e & m
only via entrenched neural pathways ,
while the l and c continue to
morph into tiny archaic
symbols. As though, the unconscious
is forming a message. ( Always “it” has something
unearthly to say. ) Except
the unconscious is
the earth , it’s just we
don’t know how she does it.
St. Thomas of Aquinas got a delirium
hit of t hat at the end
and decided to marry it. Each day
your thumbs grow paler, nails coarser, evolving
toward the ptero-
dactyl: part reptile, part bird.
As a child
pterodactyls scared you, which meant
they had your attention. Refusing to stay
in the lineage, they became
their own form.
They had an iguana for a father
and a pelican for a mom,
crispy and dipped in molasses.
If you were big enough
you could eat them
the way some people eat grass-
hoppers. Compulsive hole-
punchers, if less manic
could be sculptors,
though it requires d-e-t-a-c-h-m-e-n-t
to see it that way , , if you are
a lilac leaf sketching outside
the library window. What are those books
doing in there together ?! Nothing !
When a new one arrives, they fall in
love,, one by one. Inside their covers,
a million leaves, each
w/ black growth. A pattern of fungus ,
the shed skin of snakes & dna
traces. Like bird poop,
but more orderly and the message is see-
through. Don’t you
wish you could lift the letters
and release them halfway
back to
the liquid state ,, , before they got connected to
the circuitry? It might be kind of
relaxing. You might be
as good of a
painter
as a cuckoo bird. A few nights ago
you dreamt you were very pregnant &
in need of a place to give birth. Your boyfriend
had left you and 2 therapists
let you live w/ them
because you resembled their daughter —
though they were suspicious. Who can blame them?
As for your nails,
find a mani-
curist, someone who knows what they are
doing. Druids never lived here,
that was Europe, but you
and the sage-
brush
are distantly related via microbial
ancestors; in spite of yourself, you are
surrounded
by family. \\|/