by Lindsay Coleman

My mother was a terminator

of small birds over

the blank wheat of Pennsylvania

 

in the blind going dark

red dark

she was looking

 

in birds--arrows in the iron

lung of the dawn I was born--

 

for something beyond 

birds, their whistling tick-

tick chests

 

air hammered between stars

breath curled over the lip

of the barrel, tiny o

 

in this blood ranting 

through my body all night 

is an ancient sound:

 

a whistling, warning one 

bright hollow of another.