AMANDA DEMARCO
SOMEONE TOLD MY STORY IN A SONG
On that golden afternoon I decided to leave for Germany
an owl plummeted into the grass like a satellite come home
or a capsized Sunday radio,
chestnut in its chestnut-colored crater.
Though I was drinking my root-beer some meters away
I was somehow at the center of the impact.
--
Packing my things, I discover my things won't fit!
That's why I don't have things. That's why I'm poor here.
--
I was unable to envision
what it was exactly that I would do here,
but I was afraid.
Tiny birds shriek inside a porcelain pot.
The ultimate disgrace is to be rendered unmarketable
as in, you will be sold as male slaves
and as female slaves
but no one will buy you.
Paper roses. Crocodile tears.
A sparrow hunts by listening. Desperation.
An egg quivers & underground there's a sound to be heard
Hello, frenzy. The long tail
of hunters tells a sad story.
--
I feel like I'm crawling along the surface of the earth,
clinging to its surface.
Darling your surface temperature is too warm.
Reading under a pen name, protecting my thoughts
from my thoughts, I always thought
of planetary systems as very small,
as depicted in textbooks.
They always say things
to make girls want to be astronauts,
things like, the light left that star
when Caesar was making his conquests,
but I know the truth, I know
the light is cold and lifeless.