| Antonia Clark |
Why We Don’t Have Wingsread by antonia clark It’s nothing to do with Icarus. We’d not try to fly so high, knowing what we know now of distances in space, the endless sky— no bowl, or dome, or fitted lid—and how the air thins out with altitude, the moon’s bright face a trick of light. But still, we’d be a nuisance to light aircraft, weather balloons, radio towers—ourselves, most utterly. And everyone would want to roost in trees, despite our awkward limbs, no matter how inept at avian civilities. Featherless, doughy, heavy on the bough— the frenzied birds long since flown—we'd be left to perch alone — songless, shivering, bereft.  © Melissa Nucera Taking the I Out of the Poemread by antonia clark A muddle of nameless objects, mindless acts, a random heap of odd-shaped artifacts. A box of photos in an antique store— faces no one remembers anymore. A yard-sale jumble, useless odds and ends— a pair of glasses with a missing lens, rusted tools and nails, a plaid wool suit, broken toys, a bowl of plastic fruit. Questions with no answers but clichés, a puzzle with no exit from its maze. A life without a sense of history, a scrim of shadow play and mystery without the fabric of connective tissue— An absence so profound no one will miss you. Antonia Clark
works for a medical software company in Burlington, Vermont, and is
co-administrator of an online poetry workshop, The Waters. Recent poems
have appeared in The Chimaera, The Centrifugal Eye, The Innisfree Poetry
Journal, Mannequin Envy, The Pedestal Magazine, Stirring, Umbrella, and
elsewhere. She loves French food and wine, and plays French café music on a
sparkly purple accordion. |