A Bop for Read Write Poem

Crow Angel

Their calls rip through the air after they’ve gone.
I’ve pieced together an opera cloak
from their fallen feathers,
lined it with clouds and swathes
of midnight sky. I fly by your window.
Can you hear my cries?

Days when birds abandon trees
I comb the grass for feathers.

My cloak is black as a vanished star,
You’ll see me from afar, above a crowded
opera house, soaring
in time with Exsultate, Jubilate.
Voices lift me to a ceiling
as frothy white as a wedding cake.
It is shining with the tears
of all the arias.

Days when birds abandon trees
I comb the grass for feathers.

Crows flap their wings in my chest.
I twirl in the space above you,
my torso a treble clef,
my legs quarter notes, darker than soot.
Join me in this shadow dance,
my cloak is large enough for two,
but if you doubt me, I’ll gather

some feathers for you – on those days
when birds abandon trees, I’ll comb the grass, for you.

***

The prompt this week at Read write Poem is to write a bop using donated lines as the refrain. My refrain comes from Jillypoet. Birds are a leitmotif in many of Jill’s poems, and I thank her for sharing her perspective on them with me.

By the way, Jill has two new poems up at Mannequin Envy.

*Alleluja – Exsultate, Jubilate is an aria by Mozart. If you haven’t heard Kathleen Battle sing it, listen here.

Published by Christine

Christine Swint’s poems have appeared in Calyx, Birmingham Poetry Review, Slant, a Journal of Poetry, Tampa Review, Heron Tree, Ekphrasis, and others. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets, and she has won first place prizes from the Georgia Poetry Society and Agnes Scott College. Her first collection, Swimming This, was published in 2015 by FutureCycle Press. She teaches first-year composition at a metro-Atlanta university and writes about poetry, art, hiking, and yoga at Balanced on the Edge, https://balancedonedge.blog Twitter @christine_swint

27 thoughts on “A Bop for Read Write Poem”

  9. christine says:
    Reply

    Thanks, guys. I thought Jill’s refrain was so imaginative. And then right before I went to sleep I wrote a sentence: make a dress out of crow feathers. So that went into my poem.

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  10. paisley says:
    Reply

    while i have no idea exactly what the motivation is for this piece,, i can imagine you reading it to me and the flow of the words is near hypnotic… as always my pleasure christine.

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  18. jillypoet says:
    Reply

    I’m so happy you used my lines! The magical realism in this poem is great! I half expect to look outside and see a crow-cloak flying by. The movement and the music work well together, too. “Crows flap their wings in my chest,” is my favorite line!

    Like

  24. Suzy says:
    Reply

    My name is Suzy Perkins,
    I love mikole misigner
    she is my wife, but i am a women,
    people think it’s wrong,
    but we share our feelings using poetry,
    which we find helpful mending the hardships the world gives us.
    Love foever
    suzy and mikole

    Like

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