“I am the bird am I?         I am the throat?

                                                                   A bird with a curved beak.

                                                                   It could slit anything, the throat-bird.”

—Muriel Rukeyser, “The Speed of Darkness”

 

In a yellow alley, the throat-bird  

is rummaging near the grate, overcooked meat

smells and cabbage roots circling around her. 

The warm air rushing up

reminds her of the last good day.

It is only recently that the throat-bird

has had to call herself before

and after. With her beak stuck in a melon,

she heaves silent. Breaks

the rind slow like the conversation

she has been avoiding with her lover for months.

The flesh is rotted, anyways,

and dusk is the best time in this field town

for the throat-bird. Restaurants tossing out

their first rounds of scraps, the pink penumbras

over streetlamps flicking on. At ten sharp

the traffic lights change to flashing red

in one breath. She goes

away from the passion-light, to her thick

skull of a room, to its view above the silos

and their cache of permanent joy and effortless love.

On the edge of town, all the telephone wires

are humming with her tiny fears.

Emmy Newman lives on an island so small it doesn’t even have a stoplight. Her work has previously appeared in Poetry Northwest, CALYX: A Journal, New Ohio Review, Yemassee, and elsewhere. She currently serves as the Marketing & Events Manager for Split/Lip Press.