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Today's poem is by Mary Molinary

Little known bird of the ribcage, Bird Signs

Either 2 birds crossed
The blue air
Just in front of you or

Missiles were prepared
& placed on an X-marked border

Either a quiet morning marked
By blossomings-out &
Smallish vegetables or

The political prisoner
Awakes in the same
Cell with the same

First thought as yesterday

The cell we have in common
The target we share
What you believed once

Still holds: the body
Free or imprisoned

Your bird is your secret
A rod of carbon in an arc
Of light infinitely

Before we were fossils
We were merely
Hungry & chattering
Consequently

There is the body
Free or imprisoned there is
Justice or there is not

Prepare the cell we have in common
Sing your secret bird to sleep

The ribcage is a cage for this
The ribcage is a fine cage for this
Marked little bird of a heart

Birds with seeds (posessions), Bird Signs

When wren
fly from a dying

mouth: erasure
but never silence

wingbeat wingbeat
(pbruu pbruu) plus

a clearing of tiny
avian throats

(trill-true-eet) as
they exit

quick-as-poems
one-by-one

the sternum of
the newly dead & take

their places
in the hearts of sharp

skeletal trees
or clamber onto air

currents they will
ride like eloping lovers

When wren
flee a dying mouth:

what's left is nest
for lucky

passers-by
during a sudden down-

pour who foldnuzzle
into the shelteringmuzzle

while singing
slightly off-

key like a self-
portrait with possessions

The possessions are seeds

I have seen this twice

Copyright © 2010 Mary Molinary All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission