Anatomy of a Feather I: Leda
Stella Reed
At the rivers’ confluence birds conjoin cooling the air with one wing, two wings three.
above them clouds of bread in a beggar’s bowl.
He picks wild orchids in the rain thready stems unable to bear the heat of his hands.
For years you pressed them between your thighs until the scars fell open, pockets in your mother’s apron clutching three white eggs.
He left you tangled feathers a handful of breadcrumbs,
flower petals bruised and staining your downy breast.
Stella Reed has been published in magazines and anthologies nationally and in Australia, most recently in The Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art and Slipstream. She is the recipient of a grant from the New Mexico Literary Arts Society for the poetry and visual arts project Ordinary Cloth, the Secret Language of Women. Stella is the Development Coordinator and a teacher for the WingSpan Poetry Project that brings weekly poetry classes to residents in shelters in Santa Fe and is a teaching artist for El Otro Lado at the Academy for the Love of Learning.