MudSongs Seven & Eight: O, she says

 

Two poems by Hailey Leithauser. 

Mockingbird

No other song

                    or swoop (part

       quiver, part swivel and

             plash) with

  tour de force

stray the course note

       liquefactions

   (its new,

bawdy air an

       aria hangs in) en-

thralls,

             trills, loops, soars,

                    startles, out-warbles,

out-brawns, more

       juicily,

                    lifts up

the dawn, outlaws from

                        sackcloth, the cool

     sloth of bed sheets,

                             from pillows

           and silks

                and blue-quilted, feminine

bolsters, fusses

                      of coverlets;

                                   nips as the switch

of a juvenile willow, fuzz

               of a nettle, to

       window and window

                           and window and ever

                   toward egress, to

           flurry, pollen

and petal shed,

                            to wet street

  and wet pavement,

              all sentiment intemperate,

  all sentience

                         ephemeral.

 

Plate 21 of “Birds of America” by John James Audubon, depicting Mocking Bird.

 

O, She Says

O, she says (because she loves to say O),
O to this cloud-break that ravels the night,
O to this moon, its mouthful of sorrow,
O shallow grass and the nettle burr’s bite,O to heart’s flare, its wobbly satellite,
O step after step in stumbling tempo,
O owl in oak, O rout of black bat flight,
(O moaned in Attic and Esperanto)O covetous tongue, O fat fandango,
O gnat tango in the hot, ochered light,
O wind whirred leaves in subtle inferno,
O flexing of sea, O stars bolted tight,O ludicrous swoon, O blind hindsight,
O torching of bridges and blood boiled white,
O sparrow and arrow and hell below,
O, she says, because she loves to say O.