The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Dan Campion
The Parrots
We’re colorful. We wear our epaulettes
with pride and toss our heads back to recite, our feathers better fit for show than flight. We’re doormen who imagine they’re cadets. We were the ones who didn’t see the nets, got tangled up in them, and sick with fright were shipped here to give service and delight. Salons on better streets keep us as pets. We give them back their words, but with a bite of the exotic, like a taste of lime or ginger, and a twang shaped by the beak. It’s marvelous how we clutch, over time, a perch so slick, so worn, so hard, so slight. Flung to the gutter, even there we’re chic. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |