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All the Animals Are Birds
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
All the Animals Are Birds A dog becomes a bird.A cow becomes a bird. A bird stays a bird. The artist is explaining how he sees carousels, the animal backs emerging from wood. He keeps finding himself returning to movement. The small gray bodies hop and stir. They find their way into his hands, heads erupting like onions, bridges funneled to a beak, the features stretched and grown. No one wants to ride a starling. They cannot run.They cannot beat the tigers, the loam-nosed stallions children are drawn to, the ostriches, the ark—whichever neck pulls in front as the music stops.Tonight I am struck with the secrecy of things. In my bath, the vitals pour. Shampoo syrups: the scent is called sugar.The lip of the white tub is level with the window, and through it a boy in the backyard runs. -31- He is naked, feet tacked on the ends of his legs so careless, so salt sprung. In the yard there is little grass.This is the first I have washed my body since you tried to touch my body.The door was light, the lock painted over. I watched the bar in its silver cage. How the screws want to open. How the wood wants to give. Each cell, sprung free, is a step, is a bird, is a bird stays a bird, which you would not recognize, which you would not—how could you? how could you?—seize. -32- ...