Roy Seeger
Roy Seeger
The Boy Whose Hands Were Birds
His favorite dream: plumed
wrists lift him above the hum
of telephone wire &
pull, with their own desire,
until bones dislocate, & his
wings molt away mid-
air, revealing the bone structure
of a boy’s fingers surrounded
by the pink of healed-over
skin. He wakes & from the hands
perched on his narrow chest—
the faint trill of sparrows,
& in each one’s frantic palm
delicate cages of bone,
the chest & wing in a de-
generating precursor to flight.