by Allison Leigh
No bird wants to hear what hasn’t happened yet.
Generalizations are blatant misunderstandings, like parallel lines.
If you put off everything until the last moment, you’ll still get things done.
Tomorrow is our wake.
I would pay to pilgrimage to Easter Island in my dreams.
Remember Motown?
Remember tomorrow if it bops you on the head. You’ll get done.
Weeks ago, before the snow fell, I watched a bird perch on the fence out in the yard. It
stood so still. And I was standing that still. And I tried to hone in on what I was thinking,
but all that made sense was how still this bird was, and I, and how we weren’t thinking
anything, neither of us.
Still, someday, we will be gone. Where will we go? Where do we go?
Heart hasn’t happened yet — don’t speak it — don’t speak this.
Parallels, like loops, are illusions for the lucid. Don’t trust them, or anything.
Still the moon hovers plainly. Over what but over snakes and rotten apples.
O parallel tomorrow! Someday is awake and well! But trust like an illusion warps
and it warps raw. Where will we go? Weeks ago? Time is a blatant misunderstanding,
like birds.
I heard Motown on the radio in a car driving toward Presque Isle the Easter I was six, the
spring I watched a bird perch on the moon.
Lucid loop illusions were never the intention.
Said the sun to the bird.
Until the end, you’ll get nowhere.
Allison Leigh writes poems, songs and stories and was born in Bakersfield in 1989. She won an Academy of American Poets Prize in 2010 and graduated with honors from the University of Michigan in 2011. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Evergreen Review, The Collagist, Red Lightbulbs, Michigan Quarterly Review, Burner Magazine, Mixed Fruit, Portland Review, 20×20 Magazine, Dunes Review and elsewhere.
