To kneel by the cochinealhead of the dead.Fragments—grammarbroken along the way.I tell you the birdsdropped at my feet, eleven of them, sucked out of the sky, whole.I return home.I report the details.The men who attemptto control animalstell me to bag each one,though I am afraidto touch their brightstillness— the blank eyes in their blank heads. It is all wrong.as are the chemical cloudsdrifting from the fieldswhere the cows makeus milk and meat.The sunsets beautifully hued:oozy pink, infected apricot. Day after day of wrong color.And then farm trucks encirclethe town and spraya silver-white fogto neutralize the air.Twinkling stitchedto the sky like ghosts beading the wind.
The Brilliant Fragments
Feature Date
Series
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Copyright © 2019 by Hadara Bar-Nadav.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Volume 20, Number 1
Portland, Oregon
Editor in Chief / Publisher
Win McCormack
Editor
Rob Spillman
Poetry Editor
Camille T. Dungy
“As everything goes increasingly haywire in our politics and in our world, we stand in ever-increasing need of the emotional and ethical education that great literary magazines can provide. With each issue you finish, you’re more awake, erudite, socially aware, and alert to exciting new writers. What more do you want between two covers, anyway?”
—Jim Shepard
“Tin House is a human habitat, an abode for the bodacious, an apartment for the artful, a bullpen for writers, a castle, a cave. It’s a commorancy for birds of a feather, a condo for the uncommon, a crash pad for the dark night of the soul. It’s a cubbyhole stuffed with language—our digs, our domicile, our glorious word dump—a dwelling for the light inside us. It’s a flat, a flophouse, a hole in the wall, a joint, a lean-to, a mansion, a pad, a shack made of words, doors and windows flung open, a tin-rooved shanty on a island of desire.”
—Dorianne Laux
“Tin House magazine is a port in the storm for people who love language. It is unfailingly excellent, and committed to publishing new voices in addition to delivering freaky-fresh work from established writers.”
—Karen Russell
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
