Douglas Payne
Birdsong
I can watch time move
across the clock until it breaks,
while all your letters rot
inside my drawer,
while your perfume turns
to cheap wine on my dresser.
I could crowd the empty
restroom stalls with blue eyed does
or rest in death pose
on my carpet like a fossil,
all to black your eyes and cut
your glower from my mind.
I hold you, thrashing
in my thought, a broken dove,
your bitter song caught
in the covered cage of memory.
Bio
Douglas Payne is a writer from Lemon Grove, CA. His poetry has appeared in Breadcrumb Scabs and Mastodon Dentist, and is forthcoming in A Year in Ink Vol. 5, an anthology of the best local writing in San Diego. His fiction is forthcoming in Nailed! An Erotic Death Anthology.