Killdeer

Because bones are something to imagine

except for teeth –

I bear my shoulders

and keep my mouth closed

There are enormities in my body,

a mind                          such sentences & space       

                       I might hear music or remember birds

My mistake, I started inwardly

*

Instead –

The way a killdeer nests –

stones and eggs, tenderly

delicate          a staunch

broken wing’d

protection

*

Because I relate to birds & bones

                  caverns         &        spaces

                       does not mean they relate to me

because a body can exist

in many forms

& sentence fragments

              I touch my heart and teeth,

imagine my lungs before and after

being sick,

force an image on what is lost –

My tongue explores my teeth for reassurance and solid ground

asks: is that my tooth is that my tooth is that my tooth

                               I should have showed you the robin

But there are things I need to remember privately

or just in words

so I keep my mouth closed –

Joanna Doxey is the author of a book of poetry, Plainspeak, WY (Platypus Press, 2016) as well as several poems published in Interim Poetics, CutBank Literary Journal, Denver Quarterly, Ghost Proposal, Tinderbox, and others. She currently advises undergraduate students in liberal arts at Colorado State University where she also occasionally teaches for the honors and interdisciplinary liberal arts departments. With her human and nonhuman family, she lives in Fort Collins, CO.