VINYL POETRY

Volume 9, November 2013

BIRDIE
Robert WhiteheadView Contributor’s Note

The Sway, and This

I who tossed with refuse, with the willow-weed

He who, turned away from himself, would transform
his dark experience fine as a split-open dove folded in the hem of him

I who went along so sideswiped, darkling, who felt like when the night reaches its fullness

He would be stonewalled, final, marshalled,
he would pivot, encircle

I was his double and asked him, who could not spare the favor of body for the kind strangers?
when it seemed it could help them? when they eye it like an art?


He could be threatening about this: he who had a blade and anarchy
who took the man’s black hat off and threw it into the street, who made him humble to pick it up

The night was a meridian, I diverged from him reddish and hated

He in the watchtower with the Great Dane, he who sowed such loss in the ones who came
fallible with touch and the knowledge of what he did the regal pleasure he took

The condition of the psyche means I had to return to him

He of cleft and briar paralysis, bestial
He of censure

I followed his edict in it he said, lacerate this one in love then— he swayed— leave him