Another Creature: Poems

Lucinda’s Voice

Lucinda’s Voice I’m rocking out back in the hammock under the red maple cracked in two by last week’s storm, its spooky branches roost to a family of crows who drive the purple finches from the clothesline with their mammalian bawling, their gaudy sorrow older than our own. From the kitchen the singer’s voice slides down its raspy ladder, undiluted lust. Collapsing and inflating and collapsing. She’ll never end up with her right true love. That’s the forever storm she will not be saved from. The crows proclaim their ancient sooth: can’t rock in their lonely crow tree and tell them lies. Lucinda’s voice bobs, each note a green sail, a gauzy scarf pinned to the clothesline. I wish I could tell her my story—street lamps fried, maple limbs crashing onto the porch, gutters torn off in the throat of the storm, one book of matches left in the drawer. Spoiled meat and broken window panes. One little finch comes back to the clothesline, hungry and brave, white cord gripped in her wee bird claws. When she tweets her mate down, he flits from the broken gutter toward the maple, cheep-cheeping along to Lucinda, her voice low and canny as the crows’. You told me I was your queen You wanted to paint my picture Her voice a big empty bed with satin pillows. Since the night of the storm I’ve slept downstairs alone on the star block quilt. For three days we broke maple branches, barely 21 speaking, stuffed our broken tree in forty bags. From cover of lilacs the finches sparked for bugs. You and I don’t even raise our voices anymore. I wake when the crows warm up in their swindle song. I slide out back and rock in the twigs and tall grass, awaiting your call. 22 ...