Poetry from The Literary Review



In the Dream with Blue Snow

OLIVER FRANCISCO De La PAZ

The Audubon show flickers like a candle when winds blow on the antennae. Birds are on the screen again. It's late. Soon the room fills with snow as local channels wave their flags. Goodnight.

The television, an aquarium glass, departs into noise. Domingo snoozes. Twitching in his sleep, he sees fleets of sloops sail away, as if torn from him. These exaggerated
clouds move from the harbor and bleed into one another.

When they blossom into doves, he is not surprised. He hears the wing-flap: the sound a ship makes when it becomes a child in a white cloak, bathing.

Domingo's lips purse as he snores, whistling bird-song—sleep, pure sleep.


An Anatomy of Birds

OLIVER FRANCISCO De La PAZ

A bird flies into Fidelito's window, the cracked glass, a spider's web. Lying in the grass, its heart beats like a spitfire, then stops. To get the secret of flight, he studies the rows of the corpse's wings for hours: how the tapered form holds weight when in the air, or how the tail sticks upward like a rudder. He even notes the way its breastbone pushes outward as if someone had punched the bird in the stomach. Fidelito tilts his head to imitate the neck of a bird's awkward death.

After hours of study, he makes a human-sized replica of a sparrow's wing from construction paper. He tapes them to his arms, sticks his chest out, raises his buttocks, flaps, and struts around like that—his head arched so far he cannot see the ground.


Domingo, Too Old for Fishing

OLIVER FRANCISCO De La PAZ

Hangs his net from the tallest tree in the backyard, much to the neighbors' dismay. All night, wing sounds and the sad cries of trapped birds resound—

The ground turns a bleached white from droppings. There is no escape from the smell. Even Fidelito, stuck in the net, wants to come down because of the unbreakable stench.

For weeks flocks rule the neighborhood, until Domingo, tired from noise and sleepless nights, cuts the tangled ends of the net. The black-winged mass of the net rises, begins to fly southward.

Meanwhile Fidelito, without his father knowing it, is woven in with the birds. He hangs to a corner of the flock-quilt and dangles far above his town.


After Fidelito Goes to Bed

OLIVER FRANCISCO De La PAZ

Maria Elena watches her husband disappear into the sofa like coins. His eyes, the hard shadow of yesterday. They love each other the way old houses lean into the sea. Not his eyes, but the gleam between woman and man, their two bodies, the press of a knucklebone, the soft hand resting on a knee—the way the brass in the kitchen lingers long after . . .
          There is still the thoughtless rattle between them. The ink stamp stain of a touched wrist. Maria Elena and Domingo. Their hands clasp together as they watch their rings turn blonder in the glow of the moon.