a poem by dan rosenberg

Wax Bird


you have no taste
for news the house
covers you thickly
you look for lift
from here the distant
lover doesn’t offer
a head’s worth of heat
left in your shoulder
candle wax melted
to the table forms
a fat and flightless
bird watching it
your hackles rise
like tiny feathers

*

the t.v. hasn’t spoken
for days and you don’t
believe in channels
the world outside
her thrift of self has
left your empty form
kneeling at the closet
whispering nothing loudly
don’t think the sense
of smell can lace you
to what matters she’s
a false bone wrapped
around your sternum

*

from your window
you see a small bird
suck the sweat
from tiny pebbles
and spit them out
the same pebbles
worried raw
in her silver beak
over and over as if
a piece of stone
could be renewed

from The Crushing Organ (Dream Horse Press).



Dan Rosenberg’s first book, The Crushing Organ (2012), won the 2011 American Poetry Journal Book Prize. His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in jubilat, American Letters & Commentary, and Beecher’s. A graduate student at The University of Georgia, he co-edits Transom.