Migration
Brown bird in the apple tree, let’s switch it up. You be the watcher, and I’ll be the singer. I want you to know the kind of loneliness you can’t fly out of. I want you to wander from room to room and look at the world from windows. For just a moment, I want you to listen for the sound of distant machinery as it screeches like an animal in pain. The train leaves town, follows the river. If you stayed here long enough, you’d know. Let me be the one in the branches, the one with more feathers than foresight. Let me find my way in the wind, a force invisible as hope. But, no, you are gone. There will be no bloom on this tree for months.
Myth of Men
Twang of men’s voices next door, they gather to work on a car engine, power tools exultant with effort. My father taught me how to change a tire, oil and filter, taught me to get my hands dirty, show the world I am a man. Yesterday, two boys walked down the street, palm to palm. They could have been brothers, one the caretaker, the other at risk of running right out into the street. They could have been lovers, showing affection in a way I’ve always wanted. The men next door laugh. And because my thoughts are a flock of birds, I know they are laughing at me. Because I know nothing of automotive repair. Because they scorn me for whom I love. Because my hands are clean.
Cockchafer Beetle
—Melolontha melolontha
Sometimes ancient meanings get lost. Words crawl around in the mouth and in the mind, scuttle under stray thoughts, no more than leaves fallen to the forest floor. I think lustfully. I cast nouns and verbs aslant as shadows of themselves. I make the world lascivious, even this beetle with a name that denotes a large, plant-gnawing pest. But that was centuries before now, when children used to tie a string to a bug’s jagged leg, then watch it fly, trapped, in circles above them. There are days I only feel this way, all my inklings tethered and buzzing over me, a swarm of unquiet sorrows. I know I shouldn’t ascribe emotions to a bug, but those ebony eyes look too wise, adorned with anemone lashes. I imagine this creature a hazard to men, sneaking in at night, doing unspeakable things, laying eggs within their privates. Or another word for an STD, or an addiction to sex. Or, worse yet, an ugly epithet that just can’t be shaken loose, like the past. It’s always there, even if we remember it wrong. How it slips through trees at night, enters dark fields, and eats tender foliage. When we wake, we know something is different, and there has to be a word for it.