The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National …
Ada Limón
The birds were being so bizarre today, …
I pass the feeder and yell, Grackle party! And then an hour later I yell, Mourning dove afterparty! (I call the feeder the party and the seed on the ground the afterparty.) I am getting so good at watching that I’ve even dug out the binoculars an old poet gave me back when I was young and heading to the Cape with so much future ahead of me it was like my own ocean. Tufted titmouse! I yell, and Lucas laughs and says, Thought so. But he is humoring me; he didn’t think so at all. My father does this same thing. Shouts out at the feeder announcing the party attendees. He throws out a whole peanut or two to the Stellar’s jay who visits on a low oak branch in the morning. To think there was a time I thought birds were kind of boring. Brown bird. Gray bird. Black bird. Blah blah blah bird. Then, I started to learn their names by the ocean, and the person I was dating said, That’s the problem with you, Limón, you’re all fauna and no flora. And I began to learn the names of trees. I like to call things as they are. Before, the only thing I was interested in was love, how it grips you, how it terrifies you, how it annihilates and resuscitates you. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t even love that I was interested in, but my own suffering. I thought suffering kept things interesting. How funny that I called it love and the whole time it was pain. …
My brother holds a snake by its head. The whole …
When the ten-speed, lightweight bicycle broke down off the highway lined thick with orange trees, I noticed a giant raven’s head protruding from the waxy leaves. The bird was stuck somehow, mangled in the branches, crying out. Wide-eyed, I held the bird’s face close to mine. Beak to nose. Dark brown iris to dark brown iris. Feather to feather. This was not the Chihuahuan raven or the fantailed raven or the common raven. Nothing was common about the way we stared at one another while a stranger untangled the bird’s claws from the tree’s limbs and he, finally free, became a naked child swinging in the wind. …
In the dew-saturated foot-high blades …
First, it's a fawn dog, and then …
I like the lady horses best, …
For months, I was a cannonball …
I can’t undress from the pressure of leaves, …
Sometimes, I think you get the worst …
I used to pretend to believe in God. Mainly, I liked so much to talk to someone in the dark. Think of how far a voice must have to travel to go beyond the universe. How powerful that voice must be to get there. Once in a small chapel in Chimayo, New Mexico, I knelt in the dirt because I thought that’s what you were supposed to do. That was before I learned to harness that upward motion inside me, before I nested my head in the blood of my body. There was a sign and it said, This earth is blessed. Do not play in it. But I swear I will play on this blessed earth until I die. I relied on a Miracle Fish, once, in New York City, to tell me my fortune. That was before I knew it was my body’s water that moved it, that the massive ocean inside me was what made the fish swim. …
When you come, bring your brown- …
Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower …
After the birthing of bombs of forks and fear …
Is it okay to begin with the obvious? I am full of stones— …
When the doctor suggested surgery …
On my way to the fertility clinic, …
All these great barns out here in the outskirts, …
In the Union Square subway station nearly fifteen …
I’m not yet comfortable with the word, …