Cage
Lois Marie Harrod
the thick
black tongue
of the parrot,
my beloved, clamp
the big beak shut.
What I want: seed.
What I get: crackers
and clatter.
I turn one way,
you whip the other,
same head,
same body,
feathers,
the odor of feathers.
In the bird I
am the belly begging
sky, the sky.
Lois Marie Harrod’s Fragments from the Biography of Nemesis (Cherry Grove Press) and How Marlene Mae Longs for Truth (Dancing Girl Press) appeared in 2013. The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest (Poems & Plays); Brief Term, poems about teaching, was published by Black Buzzard Press (2011). Previous publications include Cosmogony (2010), Furniture (2008), Firmament (2007); Put Your Sorry Side Out (2005); Spelling the World Backward (2000); This Is a Story You Already Know (l999); Part of the Deeper Sea (1997); Green Snake Riding (l994), Crazy Alice (l991), Every Twinge a Verdict (l987). She has received five fellowships from VCCA and three from New Jersey Council on the Arts. A Geraldine R. Dodge poet and former high school teacher, she teaches Creative Writing at TCNJ.