Summer 2004
New Series · Volume XXVI Number 3

Contents · Contributors · Selections · Editor's Notes & Cover Art

D. NURKSE

NIGHT FLIGHT

I made friends
with a dead sparrow
I found on the sidewalk,
rigid in the center
of a carved heart.
I groomed it scrupulously.
The only blood
was a fleck in the eye.
I could make the sleek wings
glide and twirl
despite a force
that held them shut.
As we were soaring
among those trees
scored with dates
my mother called.

No, no,
it isn’t me,
that breathless name
filling with yearning,
then rage, then yearning.

D. Nurkse is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently The Fall (Knopf, 2002).

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