Alicia Hoffman




Sparrow

 


*

 

Black arrow, darting.

 

Feather and fulcrum,

crux of wingspan.

 

Upon the white

scaffold of winter,

your negative flares

 

as cameras shutter

and flash.

 

*

 

Black darling, sparrow.

 

Skeletal map of frailty.

 

Silk-boned roadmap

to a pea-stone heart.

 

Between a newborn

forefinger and thumb

 

you would succumb

to the faintest grip.

 

*

 

And there are no maps

to track this flight.

 

No sketches to trek,

no spots to x.

 

Instinct, then.

Intuition, if we trust it.

 

*

 

Birdbrains, we

 

use so little and

waste so much.


You see, we like
to fire into dark.
 

We like to match

points, strike

 

to even scores.

 

Birdbrains, we

are stars

preposterously

blinking.

 

We burn

even though

we've gone out.


  



Alicia Hoffman lives, writes and teaches in Rochester, New York.  An MFA candidate at the Rainier Writer's Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University, her recent poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, Camroc Press Review, A-Minor Magazine, Softblow, Stone Highway Review, and elsewhere.  Her first poetry collection, Like Stardust in the Peat Moss, is due out from Aldrich Press in January of 2014. 










                                    

 

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