Poetry Collection: The Vulnerability of Birds, 2019
Joanna Horton McPherson's debut poetry collection in 2019.
$10.00
Available now: The Vulnerability of Birds Poetry Collection
Before I Speak
It's my turn to take the mic
Not as a character
Not the representative you know, but as
The brave voice of who I am
Dwelling deep where my story lives
I don't like to feel
What's difficult
This standing here on stage before you
Is the beginning of being
Willing to feel
The doubt, anger, fear
To grow into the person I wish to
Become
Taking a stand for myself
Beyond the fear of fear,
The anger of anger,
The doubt of being in doubt
Is the joy of being joyful,
The confidence of being confident
And the truth of truth
It is my turn
To be the voice
The same woman
When I am 91
Waking up in my bed on wide white sheets
Vanishing into the open question
At the end of my life
I am still a young woman
No baby suckles my breasts
Anymore
No tiny hand in mine
Brings me to the window
To hear the birds
Yet I am the same woman
Who wrote this poem
Long ago
From the foundering depths of
New motherhood
I am also the baby girl
At the beginning of my life
Held by my mother
To her breast
Giving me her milk
Yearning
For the work of her career
From the depths of motherhood to be
Doing important things
Her real life
This I absorbed this into my cells
Keeping me
For a long time
From the things I loved
Especially myself
As I nursed my baby this morning
On the wide white sheets
I prayed
For love to guide me
Thanking God for the grace
To leave aside my work
For a while
For the important things
My real life
Even as she sings the alphabet
In the next room
And stammers along the floor
To find me
My baby is the grown woman
Who will bring to me at 91
Her motherhood, her children
Her children's children
And I will remember myself
Scandal
It is an act of self contempt
That I pull white hairs from my head
Leaning into the mirror
Scanning for the inaccuracies
In what I wish to be
My youthful appearance
This is not just a denial of the truth of my age
But a metaphor for my existence
These unruly sprouts
Arrived at this late hour to
Express the essential inobedience
That has defined me all my life
Is it any wonder
The child who learned to pluck from me
What was weird
When weirdness was wrongness
Has come to be
The Grim Reaper?
Culling
One by one
The zany kinks
In brilliant white
Who boldly stand apart from my crown
Immodest in their announcement
There is a slaughter going on
Though fruitless against
The merry revenge of
The Hydra of age, as
Three more sprout
For each brilliant spring that is lovelessly snatched
When will I grow up
To love
The ageless rebellion in me
That wills itself
To live
Against all odds?
The Choice
There is only one answer
I want to hear
When I ask each day
To myself
Can I drink ever again?
Part of me believes
I have a choice
Can you believe
That I can't believe
"I'm an alcoholic"
I know
Wine is my drug
I must remember
It is the great lie that
Addiction comes looking the way I think
Not what you've read
Drunk, poor luck, addict, abuser
Not you and definitely not me
We are quiet drinkers
The fun never stops
Yes I am one of the secret collection
Built this way
Having the same glass of wine again and again
Who in the mirror
Cannot meet my own eye
I have this image in my head
Of a future scene
That didn’t happen
It is my daughter
My age now and I am much older
She sees me
At dinner
Not drinking
As she always has
Nothing different
Nothing remarkable
But what she does not know is
There is another reality
A different future
That never happened
But was once inevitable
In which she sees me at dinner
Enjoying wine
As I always have
Nothing remarkable, nothing different
Except this time, she wonders if I
Have a problem
This sucking question
Will possess her every drink at her own dinner table:
Will my daughter inherit this from me?
It will be her choice
Just as it is mine
Beginning today
As it always does
And always will
My daughter will lack this question
Free from the parasite that didn't take
Seeing herself as she is
Looking herself in the eye
Never knowing another way
God Washes Away the Devil
I used to I used to
I used to know
Who I am
Chaos
(Turn)
Doesn't the devil do his work?
Under disguise
Pain is dependence
(Turn)
Listen
Go In
In in in, friend
Down down down
Light call it
Relax soft
In call in the light
Down down down
Let it fill tendency
Pain is the opening
Tenderness
Of God
You are right
This is who you are
Remember
God washes away the devil
Arizona
How different we are
If different is the word
For your dirty feet
Nestled sweetly together
Two tired pigeons
The sun bakes the heat into the pavement like a griddle
Searing any skin it touches
Not fit for a human
To walk here
Under this overpass
By the concrete park
You are grey dust
Grey shirt grey mess hair
In a haze of busy avenue shadows
If it's the great eternal sleep you seek
No one knows when it will come
My baby and I
Unnoticed in our walk's chirping and song
Toward the bright books of the library
Where the AC’s on
Where babies babble and play
With puppets and toys
You’re asleep
I hope not dead
Has no one has looked you in the eye
To tell you the green trees
Against the blazing sky?
Have you seen the purple sunset?
Perhaps there is a place in the city
To walk
Where you can hug the shadows
As the sun dips
All day
The desert cooks the colors
Lifting from the traffic and cactus
Bruised light into the sky
A watercolor of grey-purple grey-pink
You wouldn't think such moist life would survive this heat
You just have to look up
To know you're alive
Did you know
That’s what we’re famous for?
Touching the Earth
When you are left behind
In the herd's movements and young potency
And you forget who you are
Remember: you know how to listen
Compassion doesn’t make appointments
Why did I cry during the teleconference?
I opened my mouth and
Knew
The tears would come
As you spoke about the death of your father
I see myself on the screen in
What listening looks like:
Shiny desperation mixed with refusal
I have a primordial itch
The deep "next"
Reaching out and away from myself
To anything else
This is not suffering
"It's good, basically good. That's my life: the simple things"
The waves of pain wash you
As you tread gracefully
Accepting the world as it is
On my turn to talk
Having been touched
I can feel myself again
Your pain is all pain
My heart, speaking for me, is
Red-faced and her voice wobbly with emotion
I am a contortion of grace
That will not be silenced
Remembering to return to
The bed of fear
(Free-falling as it does)
I do not hold on
This is surrender
Under the Black Moon
I.
Mercury / black moon
Breathe
Little cat gripping the walls of the tub
Start over and trust that I can
II.
I wasn't old enough to even buy
cigarettes
Sought out trouble
The black sickness
Crouched over the hypnotic whirr of the ceramic wheel
My hands lost
in the curative water of clay slip
The clay demands perfect balance
or else warps off center
I allow perfection to emerge
from me
Until the darkness leaves once and for all
