Golden Warbler (Dendroeca aestiva), and: Barn Swallow (Hirundo erythrogaster), and: Purple Martin (Progne subis)
Rent from DeepDyve- Golden Warbler (Dendroeca aestiva), and: Barn Swallow (Hirundo erythrogaster), and: Purple Martin (Progne subis)
Martha Maxwell's Taxidermy Birds (1876)
Golden Warbler (Dendroeca aestiva)
When I first shot one, I marveled at the slender, decurved bill. At the blood speckling her yellow vest. I felt suddenly—belatedly—protective. A strange urge to tuck her inside my coat, to put her little beak to my own breast. Now begin assembling the bird:
Feather tract. Flight quills. Each vertebrae's small tuning peg.
In the boreal forest, it was all small berries and nectar. It was all willow and alder, and sweet, sweet, I'm so sweet. Now it's bend the legs somewhat backward along the body. Now it's tie the bill shut with a loop of thread through the nostrils.
Barn Swallow (Hirundo erythrogaster)
While in another state, her child learns to walk, picks up wordsand puts them down, nonplussed. Bird. Sunflower. Knife.
Not for everyone the heedless dive from the Mission arches.Not for everyone sunset at San Juan Capistrano.
For some, this is enough: a quiet rafter. Cup of mudand dried grass.
Remove the eyeballs, brain, and jaw meat from the skull.
Scrape off any flesh that adheres. [End Page 69]
Purple Martin (Progne subis)
Those years are gone now. Assimilatedinto the body. As my own mother warnedand promised, coaxing me down from the rafters.Now the dusk is empty of beating wings.
(What sort of woman is she?) [End Page 70]
Eleanor Stanford's first book is The Book of Sleep (Carnegie Mellon UP). Her second is a memoir entitled História, História: Two Years in the Cape Verde Islands (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography). Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, and others. She lives in the Philadelphia area.
