old glass fractures sun
to rainbow splinters
hot enough to scorch wood
while mechanical birds
call back and forth
wound singing:

neon parrots
scarlet macaws
ultramarine parakeets
chained to the same song
over and over,

an old skipped record
interrupting or punctuating bored women
hawking watches, hatpins,
fragile silk scarves tenuous as cobwebs

The bird voices
wound up or slowing
twine with shouts
of sunburnt men
fondling cantaloupe
round and heavy,
bloodwarm tomatoes,
voluptuous peaches. 

The song
winds down over
some grandma’s china
too fragile for use
too ugly for display

Unwound, the birdsong
is a siren insisting
I must want beads
bright as August,
or crave pearls
cast in sunset plastic

the birds sing microwaves
and a Maytag with a wringer
to trap long hair

whisper that if their wings worked
they would stream
ultramarine and scarlet
cerulean and crimson

Those wings
would shape a clean wind
to scatter baseball cards
& bubblegum rings,
overturn shelves
stuffed with pulp fiction
& 70s harlequins

to liberate

a book of Roethke’s poems;
full of bones & water
& sun

that turns my face up
for a kiss.