The Insomniac's House
Lisa Cihlar
dancing girl press, 2012
$7.00
Lisa J. Cihlar's poems have or will soon appear in The Pedestal Magazine, Green Mountains Review, In Posse Review, Bluestem, and The Prose-Poem Project. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in rural Southern Wisconsin.
Swampy Woman Listens to Weather Radio
She brought up the wind.
White horse waves and slashing
branches. Cracking limbs, clang
of unlatched screen doors.
On nights like this she is happy
to shell and pick black walnuts.
The thing required of you
is close observation.
See the white bib on the robin,
see how she tilts her head
to the sky so the water
runs down her throat.
See her yellow beak tipped with black.
Dear Audubon killed and killed,
brought the torpedo shaped bodies,
wrapped in fine white linen,
back to his studio to study and paint.
There is no peaceable kingdom.
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