Mistaken for Birds, This Love of the Body

Bruise-yellow cottonwoods dangle
wineglass; even
bare    branches dance

volcanic rock piles
toward each other,
& burnt wood
marvels it ended thus, spindled
in a blunt cul-de-sac world,
tarantula legged and ragged.

Charcoal arcs
slit the unenchanted land,
the floaters in my
eyes, mistaken for birds.

I ask my husband the nurse if they communicate—

his patients in wheelchairs
or strapped in standing
buckets.

He says for one middle-aged woman
with hands of folded
rice paper,
hands like seashells, thatched rooftop
shelters for mice, question marks,

her eyes           her only language
strobe light toward the stage
as she’s wheeled each year to watch her
Chippendale dancers.

A crow flies to my window,
stretches wings against wind,           
and I mistake it
for a dark splotch on my retina.






Click here to listen to Jennifer Givhan reading "Mistaken for Birds, This Love of the Body"






Jennifer Givhan was a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow, a St. Lawrence Book Award finalist, and a Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Prize finalist for her poetry collection Red Sun Mother. Nominated for the 2012 Best of the Net, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in over forty journals, including Prairie Schooner, Contrary, Rattle, The Los Angeles Review, Fickle Muses, and Crab Creek Review. She attends the MFA program at Warren Wilson College, teaches composition at The University of New Mexico, and is at work on her second novel and poetry collection. You can visit Givhan online at www.jennifergivhan.com.