1
Calls to mind the truce on the Serengeti
the day the rainy season pulls back and the star
reignites the glut of skin plastered-to-the-rib thirst
the scorch of lions and buffalo, elephant, giraffe
at the water hole, and, somehow, not a lick
of blood;
the day-spa of starlings
and sparrows in a fire hydrant puddle
guttered in a no-parking zone. Enraptured
they motor their wings so fast they rattle feral
cats on a street better known for the pit-
bulled fences, broken-bottle fences, and fresh meat.
2
In order to translate the surface of the pool
as the shape of the wind in the opening scene
of Halloween, dry as the omen of cars
parked in piles of dead leaves, or the lecture hall
on the hill as a Giant’s throne, a cold war era
dinosaur lit up like a billboard; the pool appears
to imply: you must first fall for the mural
that appeared one day out of nowhere on the east
wall of the masjid; the woman in cut-offs
cross-legged on a rug with turntable, Tito Puente
on deck; for the greenhouse, the chicken coop
and the fanyamas, Rhode Island reds, and silkies
3
who could forget the silkies, let them break
your heart. More and more, leaves wrinkle
the surface: what the hell happened here
and more questions, like, do city-birds drone
like desert-birds? Questions that snake
their way into this oasis: a memory
of birds in the pool, a plastic bottle
gardened in the empty corner lot, native
grass grown wild around a bed
of metamorphic rock, a trellis draped in morning
glories, a lattice of emerald ribbons
the crown of her garden hat, her hunter-
green boots, rooted in the dirt beneath her
finger nails, a hive of sparrows
Adam Wiedewitsch was poetry editor and columnist at The Prague Review, a founding editor of Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, and contributing member to the Pirogue Collective before giving it up to teach middle school in the south Bronx. His poetry has appeared in Azul (Holland), Carapace (South Africa), and most recently in Salamander, Paris Lit Up, and the anthology Inheriting the War from Norton. He has received fellowships from DAAD in Berlin, the Eva Tas Foundation, The Millay Colony, and The Ledig House International Writers Residency. He lives in New York City.
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Any one of these images is wonderful: birds in a spa in a puddle in the gutter! Then after a neat three line form to, abracadabra, change: signal, change mood.
Once I remember this poet Adam telling me he would write a long long poem like John Berryman, better than Berryman. I see with this that he is well on his way. Felicitations.