A fiddle pulled from the throat of a sparrow
____________________________________

little piece of silence

astray in the circumstantial music of a crowd

part myth, part massacre

have you put away your toy internment

turned to the first movement

where the house was empty

& the dead hair of the harpist spread on the lawn

its arrayed core drawing a grace note

from the muttering of those exhausted by wild dance

showing an oar for a lyre

a turtle shell a tear

cleaving a bird call on the kettle drum

to unsettle a dust of harmonics

expelling an itinerant elsewhere

an epistolary scratching-post

a winged thing for the gypsy's chime

the timbrel's return to nowhere

 

From A Fiddle Pulled from the Throat of a Sparrow by Noah Eli Gordon, 2007

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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