blackbird online journal spring 2002 vol.1 no. 1

POETRY


DANIEL COUDRIET

Necessary Authorities

What stone is telling this story, the silences
of a palm pressed into a steering wheel,
slowing for the guardhouse where they hunt
for flies smuggled in the fruit.

Signs warning of wandering animals,
of notifying the piles of green parrots
dead by the road, the turkey vultures
not far off.
             The no narrative of landscape,
endless grasses and islands of trees—
a horse standing ankle-deep in the flood,
its bridle neatly attached to a signpost.

Not even the mice we feel climbing our necks
as we sleep can tell us of the infidelities,
the way we costume our own hands
or a clear lake means there are two skies. 


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