Sparrows

| 129 Sparrows lisa fink Shaped like south and east, and smelling of lilacs, I am a soft voice. I am my father shooting sparrows off the roof of the Old Barn. I am feathered hop. I am bang and pop. I split open horse chestnuts in front of the house. I am hiding in the upstairs closet. I am no animals in the house. I’m an addition and a box of bunnies. I am rows and rows and rows of sweet corn, green beans, peas, I am a patch of pumpkin, a patch of cucumber. I am a patch on my father’s overalls. I love lying in the lumpy grass. I am cold cereal, but only on Monday mornings. I’m a field of alfalfa in bloom, a black dog with a slippery tongue. I am two goats eating my mother’s roses. Voices are raised in anger, and I’m afraid. I am twine strings tied around a calf’s leg. I’m a calf stuck in a birthing cow’s vagina. I am three o’clock in the morning. 130 | ecotone I am County Road 92, Highway 12. I am Pioneer Creek Road. I’m a pigeon, a barn spider. I am batteries in the refrigerator. There are dirt and early-evening thunderstorms under my fingernails. I live on rats hidden beneath planks of plywood in the farmyard, my brother with a shovel, a plank to be lifted. I am my mother eating raw hamburger out of the bowl. I am not afraid of you. I am not afraid of the dark. ...