Katherine Fallon

DISGUSTING BIRD
 

 
I'm bound to marry the hayseed, 
dishwater blond and brought up 
 
among marsh birds, thin as reeds. 
We'll go to Vermont, because it's 
 
legal. Because you're milk soap white. 
Because it's almost un-American. 
 
I'll be like a dead thing, I will, 
and I'll make you cry, slap you 
 
with bedding, other you 
down to the scent of eraser. 
 
Disgusting bird, I'll go down. 
Frond of fern, I promise.

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MISSING
 

I found her wrapped in my bed sheets—
butcher’s meat neat in brown paper, 
so tight she couldn’t breathe.  
 
If she hadn’t been so small, 
I might have found her in time.  
She might not have been open-eyed 
and stone when I pulled her like a lost sock 
from between bed and wall.  She fit 
in my palm.  Size of a robin’s egg
and as blue, a loose bead, 
I could have held a dozen of her without spilling.      
 
I tucked her into a box of kitchen matches,
slid it shut.  Dropped her down, unfolded 
my stiff fingers.

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NO
 

My mouth, roadside attraction of a cave,
is cold as basements, damp as what will rot, 
and does open, given permission. Will not,
 
in fact, close. The self—looped and cordoned off 
as cursive—drips, too, stalactite-violent. Wants
for allowance. Grows slowly, but grows. My refusal 
 
stretches back to the old yard, old ghost dog. Leave it.