To the Woman Who Keeps Thinking about Birds
The mind has room for other variations:
The moon’s leering eye
How thoughts and prayers can glut a society like a backed-up sewer
That man hawking bible verses above the farmers market chatter
The cringe of children huddled in a classroom fearing the thud of a boot the stutter of a gun
The lottery ticket and the idiot
A penny once valued and shiny now bypassed in some leaf-dappled gutter
Remembering Hank Aaron’s sweet swing
National Earthworm Day
Aung San Suu Kyi shuttered to house arrest (again)
The Oh My! or Oh Crap! of love
Deep siphoning of rights
The blind eye of wrongs
Thirteen ways of looking at galoshes
Ukraine
The train set you got when you were ten that your father wouldn’t stop playing with
Time and all its trickery
The black hole of hot potatoes and dragons
A knee to the neck of innocence
That alluring luxury of lilacs
Rainbows celebrated every month
The rapture verse line word
15 thoughts on "To the Woman Who Keeps Thinking about Birds"
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I love the intertextual title in your reimagining of the list poem, Sylvia!
Thanks, Gaby!
This is beautiful.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting!
This is so inventive, Sylvia. I need to read it again and again!
Nancy – Thanks for your support! Btw – I do know how to knit; my fingers just won’t cooperate any more! Still would like to meet up one day!
What a wonderful list poem. Loved the specificity of details, and the line “How thoughts and prayers can glut a society like a backed-up sewer” really got me.
Karen – Thank you for the comments! Your poetry really inspires me to try erasure poetry. It’s a hard form, but you have mastered it well.
I really enjoyed this
a black hole of hot potatoes and dragons!
Great piece, Sylvia! I love its accumulative energy.
A great list poem! Each line offers much to ponder. And I especially like “The Oh My! or Oh Crap! of love”–ain’t it the truth?!
All the evil lurking in this poem!!!
Love the mix of abstract and concrete here. And the title, perfect.
A great list poem. So many specific details.