by Myronn Hardy

The Emperor of Terracotta Roofs Confronts the Jester

He is standing at the highest point of the roof.
That beautiful blue thing stares
at that high cerulean. Sirens     emergency
sirens spin red on tops of cars     vans     on
walls where glass has been broken.

He is bewildered rearing his head to scream.
The emperor screams for what has
fallen     for what has become
material     cold     stitched together
with something barbed.

Down from the top     he is careful.
His pale blue feet clutching those tiles     he
prances on the roof ’s edge balancing
his train of feathers     each possessing an eye     each
seeing what it sees despite the agony of gaze.

What has erupted continues to kill.
The jester is juggling glass spheres
on the balcony. He watches
the emperor turn     stare as if to strike.
The emperor calls.   

The blush of his tongue     the tunnel of his throat
something soft against that serrated sound.
Sirens     sirens as spheres shatter
on limestone     on moving cars that keep moving.
We only have air left in our hands.

by Anna van Valkenburg

I like to think of you as parallel
to what I already know.

In your classroom, the trees
stand upright like pencils,
their leaves are rolled.

They have memorized the wind
and recite its lines,
they drop conjugations
of the bee’s ceaseless buzz
and the wolf’s howl
like chestnuts. They are versed

in many languages. He who has no birds
for ears, only two sharp tongues for arms,
comes from time to time

to spread black silence. It is
at these great times of need
that the trees stumble,
fall to their knees. Not even Sir
through their once green lips,

not even Amen. It is you
who cuts off their heads, one by one,
with a sharpened ray of sun;

a thorough teacher,
harsh and unforgiving.

by Anna van Valkenburg

I’ll be at the Bird’s birthday.

At the table there will be bears,

horses, yellow bats.

I’ll put my hair in order, I’ll sit

up straight like hard rain, like anywhere

I’ve been. Come too

and spread yourselves

out like notes

across the junipers.

A thorn to hold down the evening —

I will grow into the ground.

Pull me out, make me visible,

Then erase me.

Then erase the bird.

by Anna van Valkenburg

“If they could fly, there’d be no men on earth,” prababcia says, to
the knees in the polana, the nettles wrapping around her wrists
like a garland. Her scarf is still red in certain places, in the
shadow of the Ursus 360 it pinches off her head

clear as a globe. I’ve bled red like that between my fingers
plucking gooseberries like guitar strings, every summer
plopping them into the same powder–blue wash basin
— in twos or threes — that ran dark like a mud river
where the plastic had scratched; that withstood the weight

of all the fallen offspring
of the cherry tree,
of the milky reflection
of the moon,
of candles and genuflections,
of the last rain,

until it cracked deeply enough to become un–
recognizable to itself. Pound said the difference
between a gun and a tree is tempo:
the tree explodes every spring.

I imagine her as a kestrel without arms.
I’m a kestrel and she’s a kestrel
but the sky isn’t made
for kestrels, it’s made for humans

and suddenly
the earth flips and falls into her eyes like rows upon rows
of harvest soil. We have no hands to wipe it away.
I blow air in her eyes, but this doesn’t empty them.
I rub her eyes with leaves.

The bird asks,
Is that how you love someone,
or how you find them bearable? 

Ringed worms wrap around her
neck and her ribcage,
twice around each leg.

She shoots up
into the budding sky.