ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
THREE POEMS
by Gabriella Torres

The Flyway Concept of Bird Migration

We are points falling. We are two bodies searching for math.
On this trip to the meadow, watch for the birds in centrifugal flight.


I'll meet you, green, in a northern territory.
Give ear for the call-note. Wait for a breath in the throat.


Next a burning, now a burial. Sent out to sea was an incandescent hero.
Left on shore, a great hunter of clouds. Rumbling up flyways and rivers,
you are momentum & I will be a bird.


I started this great search for home. I am an itinerant creature & hunt
for the possible motion of a body, celestial, in the upper air.


Where once we stood is now a broken continent.
This is our call note, an imaginary wind.


In the color of dusk came the sound of hallowed singing.
Soft as the palms of children, soft as a vespertine bell.


We follow the night-songs of herds. This call of ours: Atlantic flyway.
Look for north and prophetic equations. Listen for the antiphonal echoes of wings.



In Learning Bird Songs

I
Hello homeland. I am native snow
bringing to you the light step of boundaries
we had previously forged. This is romance.


II
I am speaking to you as a rare bird on the wind-sound.
This was our pasture. I was the thief. Loving snow
because it was a delicate thing. We are between bloom and field.


III
With one solid bridge came the onslaught of sparks,
a circus, a burden, of one-horse calls. In this instrument
hides an open hand. This is a history about your heart.


IV
Finding a mystery in a chorus of balance.
I look to you only as a point of light.
To touch in code because it is a pretty physics.
We are beats happening. We are rhythms underway.



Correspondence

Dear time-travel,

Let me thank you for points in space
where I got to play the Saint, a home-run,
and some lucky dog. Launching through walls
and other molecules, I hold you in
my tight little hand.
Let's place the stones together.

          ***

Dear the color blue,

I walked right into you
as casually as looking for doves.
It was not quite twilight,
but getting there.

(In this episode I will be a monk counting shells. On this sound I will be water after flight.)

          ***

Dear logic,

I've searched through your colors and catalogued your echoes.
Today I saw you pick up a delicate animal.
Cupped like a small bird.
Cupped like a sculpture of glass.

         ***

To my chimera,

Your favorite place to sit is the shoulders. You like to chase your tail on my back.

         ***

Dear science,

Let me hold your voice in a jar. Let it get to glowing.
And all those songs can be answered.
I will wear my white dress
& learn waltzing steps. Each pace will sound like water.
Each piece will revel like migrating birds.