Poems and Texts

“THE BIRDS” by E. Tracy Grinnell

THE BIRDS

a sonorous animal moves with and within the landscape it also defines
is no more capable of turning on than away
sadness rearranged to madness that by nature’s law
– to bend, to become – rends itself into
the order of disorder, riding the waves in a manner of waiting out
your own madness is what you see as nature turning against you
the order of disorder, riding the waves in a manner of waiting out
– to bend, to become – rends itself into
sadness rearranged to madness that by nature’s law
is no more capable of turning on than away
a sonorous animal moves with and within the landscape it also defines

E. Tracy Grinnell

E. Tracy Grinnell is the author of four books of poetry: Hell Figures, portrait of a lesser subject, Some Clear Souvenir, and music or forgetting. “Helen, A Fugue” was published in the first volume of the Belladonna* Elders Series in conversation with A Pear / Actions are Erased by Leslie Scalapino. Limited edition chapbooks include Mirrorly, A Window, Leukadia, Hell and Lower Evil, Humoresque, Quadriga, a collaboration with Paul Foster Johnson, and harmonics. Grinnell’s poetry has been translated into French, Serbian, and Portuguese. She currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Pratt Institute and lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is the founding editor and director of Litmus Press.

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