We Are not Birds But

by Alessandra Naccarato

Febrile, dizzy and tipping against the porcelain edge
of some woman’s tub: here I am.
This not my home.
Kwaku, five dogs, a grandmother live here
and I am cough, wind, smell — passing. And thankful for it.

Against my mirror my eyes scan
places familiar with his touch, land always
on the lobe, and sit waiting for noise. Call me. Say this:
I still smell you here; quiet, small, asleep.

Today turning a corner I reached to embrace some man
with the same chin, same hard fists swinging near his knees.
Only the hot dust of city came full in my mouth and the poetry faded.
I climbed into the bus instead, gave them my quarter, headed to a glass shelter
in the centre of town for batteries.

He is threaded across this ocean
with songs like chord that leave me bound and yielding,
prostrate beneath headphones.
Hot with malaria, I wept lyrical.
And this town, this city, this wound came fragrant,
all blood and bowels and me masked with iodine
singing defeat, asking for removal, binging on television,
pleading for silence. My pupils dilated for need of dark.

But fevers bring strange dreams.
Recovering, forcing bread down my throat with juice for good measure,
I forget I dreamed massacre. I say, steady.
Steady. This too shall pass. Each day another measure
of our parent’s blood drawn in us, of the impossibility of transfusion,
of flight and her strange mutations of distance.

We are not birds but
here I am, migrant in winter.
Searching seed from the palm of strangers,
planning my return for spring.