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Perspectives on the Migratory Bird
by Judith Huang
I
Venice
is not what you think it is
the wing of the hall collapsing
with the loud and the operatic gloves
I closed my eye and decided
and the fathers rose suddenly
the patterns of the north and south pole
and the magnets in the heads of both
the butterflies rose with no brains
this is what they do best, the fluttering
the avoiding, the landing then
the teasing flick away
a table there one minute
and gone another, deeply unreliable.
as though the presence of the day
will not matter; the first bright
wing collapsing
on the Venetian ball
and all the sinking it entails.
II
the breastbone, surged like a fin
for developed muscles, a frame
and now delicately pursed between
the thumb and finger, a pigeon’s breast
slow and sharp as a waistcoat
of many bitter colours. I remember
that pigeons are firstly English
and the box this one is in
must have coursed the Atlantic,
beak parted ever so slightly
as an Alexander’s. Little conqueror
what are you doing
in the Museum of Natural History?
Were you perhaps admiring
the botanical offshoots of your provinces?
The pigeon is dumb,
rapturous, and will not reply
except with the hobbling motion
of his spine. Too many skulls!
And none in the least are Yorrick.
III
on the ground, my fists bound
like ostrich wings
You will fly. All you need is some
structural readjustment. Increased fluidity to counter
the rigidity of the labour market. So they say.
I plant my neck firmly in the ground
as the world begins its revolutions.
They, the truck, the buyers, the
parental splash, will not get to me;
my rump is raised in a disdainful pose.
What if I, muscular, ran away?
I imagine my pounding limbs insist
on this, my pyrrhic victory, a stroll
across the sands, defiant stares
and the flutter of eyelashes
that will whip whirlwinds home
but the home has already spun
the island earth filling up my ears
it seeped the damp against my cheeks,
as though already sinking.
IV
well the boat was high-tech
but the sea wasn’t, and it was full
of refugees like Vietnamese slowly, surely
starving on the moon.
The moon, too, is a boat,
and the Atlantians would have hopped on
if they had had the technology –
so much more convenient to tie a string
to orbitals and drop off at the
appropriate continent than anchor aimless
driftwood. As it was, they did not move at all
in the conventional sense of the word,
but let the earth revolve while they
sat on, floating miserably sure
that somewhere underneath was paradise.
The nagging reassurance
filled them with despair and hope –
perhaps somewhere the goddess of the moon
was marine life, and air changed place
with water, the cosmic rabbit took a swim
and beamed, a lampfish, laser red his eyes.
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