{"id":480,"date":"2012-11-27T02:02:27","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T02:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/poetry\/?p=480"},"modified":"2012-11-27T02:02:27","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T02:02:27","slug":"from-brown-thrashers-by-hugh-behm-steinberg-pt-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2012\/11\/27\/from-brown-thrashers-by-hugh-behm-steinberg-pt-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"From Brown Thrashers By Hugh Behm-Steinberg (pt 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ruby-Crowned Kinglets<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nNow the lord has restrained me, and I\u2019m the smallest bird, but I\u2019m not afraid of my body because I don\u2019t need my body.
\n 
\nBeneath this building, beneath every street there\u2019s a desert. The dust will rise up and cover us as though we\u2019d never existed.
\n 
\nEvery part is a piece, and your hand hovers over it: it takes so long for this to happen you can\u2019t see it happening.
\n 
\nWalk before me, and you will be perfect, a passerine flickering its wings.
\n 
\nAnd I will put laughter in the middle of your name, and all your words will be nouns.
\nYour fear will not be in front of you, and the water when it comes.
\n 
\nIt comes in different parts of the river \u2013 every night a different part. After I am old I shall have pleasure,
\n 
\nI shall dine upon eggs and hover beneath leaves and branches, down the side of a cliff to the desert below.
\n 
\nThen I found out that you were dumping water every night \u2013 I was drowned.
\nBut nothing is too hard that time won\u2019t soften, which is a promise so you decided to save it.
\n 
\nAnd the kingdom of things, it\u2019s so meaningful. As a frame is on fire and afraid of your son.
\nAs a frame is made of water, which is fearless and will not hold anything you want.
\n 
\nOut of the water a pair of eyeglasses, his finger poking through where one lens is shattered.
\nThey are heavily bifocal and reflect the sun. Ruby-crowned kinglets shall be of her.
\n 
\nI will be one hundred years old when I have a son, and my wife will be ninety: I will only spend my winter with him, but he will love us.
\n 
\nI will spend my last ice coins to buy him clothes. We\u2019ll live in the desert, near Joshua Tree.
\n 
\n 
\n______________________________________
\nDouble-Crowned Cormorants<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nWhen I get older I\u2019ll grow darker. I\u2019ll be calming, I\u2019ll be branched. I\u2019ll sun myself.
\nI\u2019ll dry out, I\u2019ll preen. If you drink drink some more I say, you\u2019re in the water anyway.
\n 
\nGo deeper into the water. Swim low in the water, with just your neck and head visible, and dive through it. Until the ice-lid has closed over us, don\u2019t return till the cover is lifted up in the spring.
\n 
\nThe world is legal, but its cops cannot be seen. The world is illegal, what side are you on? There\u2019s a law around you. Ease my worried mind. Thriving now that DDT\u2019s been banned.
\n 
\nStarting to stop as on a small boat you pull the oars the wrong way you spin make a whirlpool with your webbed feet. A lung as you dive further under. A loving kindness as you dry out in the sun.
\n 
\nNot resentful, happy. I\u2019ll know what it\u2019s like, I\u2019ll lie there like your son.
\nIt will matter more when you let go. So don\u2019t let go.
\n 
\n 
\n_____________________________________
\nAnna\u2019s Hummingbirds<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\nVisit our yard and I feel blessed. Investigating tangles don\u2019t you want to?
\nI\u2019m tangled too there\u2019s a lot to check out. One buzzes my head, territorially.
\n 
\nNot ownership but belonging to. Knot the best into your weeks the garden asparagus towering, the artichokes erupting and buzzed by a hummingbird.
\n 
\nOne at a time. Might also be looking for earwigs, I bet they eat those too.
\n 
\nI bet they see colors we can\u2019t. I bet they used to have a compass in their heads but they said there are enough circles in the world. We are kin that shininess unmakes certain parts of you we really like that.
\n 
\nYou hover over my snoring head you taste my ear I dream I\u2019m spilling pollen everywhere; there\u2019s so much gold coming out of me it\u2019s embarrassing. Don\u2019t be embarrassed, you say, it\u2019s a spiritual process you\u2019re undergoing.
\n 
\nA frozen shoulder in your shirt, I lift the shirt off you; we\u2019re in bed in the afternoon just talking, putting the after in, and they\u2019re working working working. There\u2019s so much bloomland the world was made for sex the hummingbird says
\n 
\nand making things squeek.
\n 
\n 
\n________________________________________________
\nHugh Behm-Steinberg <\/strong>is the author of Shy Green Fields (No Tell Books) and The Opposite of Work (JackLeg Press, forthcoming December 2012). His poems can be found in such places as Crowd, VeRT, Volt, Cue, Slope, Aught, Fence, dirt, Ditch, Nap, Forge, Swerve and Zeek, as well as few places with more than one syllable. He teaches writing at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where he edits the journal Eleven Eleven.
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ruby-Crowned Kinglets     Now the lord has restrained me, and I\u2019m the smallest bird, but I\u2019m not afraid of my body because I don\u2019t need my body.   Beneath this building, beneath every street there\u2019s a desert. The dust will rise up and cover us as though we\u2019d never existed.   Every part is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-things"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}