shot glass
title
Issue # 6 January 2012
"... brevity is the soul of wit ..."
- William Shakespeare

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.