Disambiguation With One Bird in the Hand
by Cal Freeman
To be just gone, to be
gone as you are just
adjusting to the old house,
your fellow creatures
and the soft light
around the lamp.
To refuse to listen
to a querulous voice
whose only intention
is to soothe and keep you
on this earth. Do you trust
yourself to cradle
a small creature in your hands
and quell its better instincts,
which is to say
assuage its fear? If no,
you shouldn’t own a bird.
Your father never did.
Now he’s as ethereal
as the enamel the anti-seizure
drug Tegretol leached from
your sister’s teeth.
You remember
how she vomited
against the windshield
of that ’76 Mercury Cougar
the day he dropped her
on her head. He’s not alive
in that stairwell,
but you can find part of him
living there. He’s the only one
who blamed him for that fall.
The white parakeet
she bought after his death
perched on her wrist
for the first time today,
then it escaped and flew
lividly around the room.
Let there be a lesson
in a bird refusing its cage,
but don’t turn it into allegory.
The only worthwhile
lessons are narrowly
applied. What kind
of sad bastard
buys a bird to fill
a void? What kind
of void is filled
by imprecation?
You’re also seeking
the affection that animals
can’t offer. You’re glad
he’s in Flat Rock
in a crypt six feet
above the ground,
down the road
from the pie shop
where he’d sip piping
hot black coffee
and read Hart Crane
while listening to
the whine and tremolo
of cargo trains, next to
the southern bank
of that quiet forking river.
You loaded his ashes
into the vault
on the day of his internment
because no one else
had the stomach for it.
A crypt is not a cage,
though it too is for
your own good.
To be that lithe,
to perch upon a hand
and feel the tremor
carry through
the hollow legs.
Cal Freeman is the author of the books Fight Songs (Eyewear 2017) and Poolside at the Dearborn Inn (R&R Press 2022). His writing has appeared in many journals including Permafrost, The Poetry Review, Verse Daily, Berfrois, The Moth, Oxford American, River Styx, and Hippocampus. His writing has been anthologized in The Poet's Quest for God (Eyewear 2016), I Wanna Be Loved By You: Poems On Marilyn Monroe (Milk & Cake Press 2021), Of Rust and Glass (Volume II) and What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People (University Press Kentucky 2022). He is a recipient of the Devine Poetry Fellowship (judged by Terrance Hayes), winner of Passages North's Neutrino Prize, and a finalist for the River Styx International Poetry Prize. Born and raised in Detroit, he teaches at Oakland University and serves as Writer-In-Residence with InsideOut Literary Arts Detroit.