Songbird

Resonant poems give form to the paradoxes of embodiment and interiority

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