She stands sometimes, sits others in the Emerald Green,
afraid of moving anywhere since the morning, each feather
is succinct with black and white & her eyes mirror
the neighbor’s house & the sky. She looks at me with no fear.
She grew out of the last blue egg and near-naked.
Her eyes opened days later & distinguished me from her mother.
She is so comely now, and her feathers are heavy yet short of length.
By evening, the tree is empty of her—blood on her
defeathered neck, a hole in her chest,
a half-bitten leg in the grass
beside the tree.
Next day I seek the bird mother who is not
crying but picks up dry straws, again…
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 1.
Xiaoly Li is a 2022 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship Grant in Poetry. Her poetry collection Every Single Bird Rising is forthcoming with FutureCycle Press (2023). Her poetry has appeared in Spillway, American Journal of Poetry, PANK, Atlanta Review, Chautauqua, Rhino, and elsewhere.
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