BirdtalkAuthor(s): Dennis SchmitzSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Fall, 2008), p. 42Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20536987 .

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DENNIS SCHMITZ

Birdtalk

Their beaks tell you what they feed on:

needle probes trees for bugs,

blunt-beak breaks seeds.

What about Tina, newly-divorced, wiping

her beak as she hauls her laundry,

stamping emotional hunger down

our shared backstairs?

The sparrow, seed-geek, calls

out the size of what it discards

until it discards even its call.

Tina's overheard sotto-voce is

a loose fit for every bird

emotion except wrath, which humans can will, probably first in nouns,

or the verbs which help us

measure our inadequate stools or the meds

like grief we weep late night into a pillow, thus, we hope, discarding them.

42

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