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The Death of Poetry is a Paradise Warbler

slow sweating onions in a pan

she said your jawbone is a saltlick

                                                       did she say

hand-over-the-cash-and-no-one-gets-hurt?

 

maintain your focus / pray for your mother

language, go the way of palm-wine drinkers

who believe the remedies are the remedies

they have always been:

 

Swimmer’s block: half vinegar, half water

Pink eye: massage the bridge of the nose

Arthritis: Apricots, almonds, whisky from a mug

Ear infection: chew your bodyweight in bubblegum

Everything else: ground the rind of tangerines

               in a pestle with cherry bark, add tobacco

               and vinegar, drink until you fall

 

beginning with a definition

is never a good idea                paradise warbler

            traipsing through the herb garden

 

dog stops on whistle, whistle hangs dog

     owner / what you think you know but don’t

can hurt you / chrome plated fire

     breathing dragon / flask of scotch

on the museum floor / in the abandoned theater

where someone got shot, the one absorbed by

shadow is never who you think

 

if you’ve made it this far I can tell you

that she never really loved him so much

as she was afraid for her life

without him – inside a single remedy

there is the capacity to freeze

bullets entering the breast of a paradise warbler

 

she was born into the moment

of light touching everything it didn’t want to burn

             tongue like flame

beginning with definition is the death of any bird

JIM DAVIS is an MFA candidate at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in Wisconsin Review, Seneca Review, Adirondack Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Contemporary American Voices, among many others. Jim lives, writes, and paints in Chicago, where he reads for TriQuarterly and edits North Chicago Review.

Jim Davis

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