Songbird

Utilizing the short lyric poem in long sequence, Songbird addresses matters both urgent and ancient: what it is to grow from a child into an adult, how to remain inside one's body, what it means to open the mouth and sing. Guided by the images, senses, and sounds provided to her by the natural world, the poet invents a stuttering natal language to approach the unsayable aspects of interior life. In doing so, the poems collectively trouble the binaries that beset modern existence: the simultaneous push-pull of sexual desire; the interior and exterior landscapes that shape our perceptual fields; the reckoning of violence with beauty; the human need for both permanency and flight. Songbird is a daring and necessary book.

[sample poem]

let me take something small
 
                                                between my teeth
 
piece of straw meant       to signify your body

which was given freely to me        or threads of me
 
that are wheat strands      always these small barters       
 
for a price would I give you       the edge that is
 
your absence for my presence     and you between my teeth
 
for the price of grass       the price of all grasses
 
so say I        to you        in prayer      I would 
 
swallow whole          what gave you in part