Charlie Bondhus
Bird
Wild birds fly into a man’s home;
the resident will soon depart.
—Jia Yi
The last Sunday in autumn brings snow
which sticks only to the cars, spreading
a cataract-thin scrim across the windshields.
From beneath lumped covers, you claim to hear it
beating the window,
sounding, you say
like hummingbird wings,
slowed to a heartbeat.
Your voice mimics the wind,
emphasizing sibilance and plosive, tripping
over the slight demands
of nasals and fricatives.
The rambling sheets and strewn pillows
conceal you, suggesting an unpersoned bed,
something to haunt me
as I cook breakfast.
Head on paws, Akiba watches
me pouring the orange juice, brewing coffee,
cracking eggs and frying bacon
in the black pan, where the brightly-colored
yolks seem to be stating the glib truism
that there is beauty in death.
When you enter the kitchen,
your cheek is marked
with a small, purple half-moon.
My breath becomes like the tearing of paper.
You stopped taking them, I say.
You sigh, and in so doing, present
an illusion of mastery,
the bruise-colored shape
shrinking, growing, twisting
as if beholden
to the puppetry
of the living body.
I’m sure there’ll be a poem, you deflect,
parceling your bitterness,
but what rhymes with sarcoma?
We sit, angry men sharing a meal,
our eyes circling the dusty
centerpiece, the golden toast,
the condiments gleaming
in their cut-glass bowls, when
suddenly, there’s a bird,
one of the small, brown ones
(a sparrow?) skipping tentatively
across the smooth laminate.
How did it get in?
Akiba does not bark.
More interested than threatened
he approaches, sniffs. The bird flutters
from floor to countertop, seemingly
the least concerned
of the four living beings in the room.
It pecks a crumb, regards us
with one black, convex eye
then coasts from countertop
to kitchen sink. The flue,
I blurt, cold last night.
You stand, give chase, waving
your hands as if casting a spell, and
now Akiba begins to bark.
I watch you, dog, and bird bolt
in a haphazard parade
through the living room
and out to the foyer, where you open
the door, letting in snowflakes,
until our visitor disappears
into the gray-white morning.
The dog sits on the carpet beside you,
in the spot worn thin
by years of booted feet.
Leaving the door open,
you stand, peering
at the moist, dying grass,
the frost-tipped bushes,
the bundled and low-slung sky,
while over your shoulder I spy
in the shadow of the pine,
some four-legged, purple mass,
limping and feral,
sniffing the earth, scavenging
the last scraps of autumn.
Charlie Bondhus is the author of All the Heat We Could Carry (2013), winner the 2013 Main Street Rag Award and the Publishing Triangle’s 2014 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. His work appears in numerous journals, including Poetry, The Gay & Lesbian Review, CounterPunch, The Alabama Literary Review, and Midwest Quarterly. He is the poetry editor at The Good Men Project.