#MIDDLEBURY
The neighbor’s buddy watching my screen through the window
francine j. harris
Because the tube is turned to the window, the neighbor’s buddy coughs
a cough of pigeons. a hack of grackle. a bird out the window. It’s like
the neighbor’s buddy on my ledge, smoking. The neighbor’s chum in the blinds,
the eyes that peer, the eyes that open. propped and sunglassed. a kind
of smoking blackbird, an inveterate
tombirder. His leather wings are splayed. his rock in the cold. He has one foot on ice
porch
and one foot wiggle. one foot rockerbird. a one-foot band. His cough is the cough
of the myriad smoker, the murder of smoker. There is quiver of murder. His cough
is the cough of a white boy, northern. of a Michigan leather. of the white boy jacket,
his leather like hair. The air is gray like cig smoke. gray like ash.
gray with the onset of northern porchlike spring and its porchstep rain. Wet
and snowy, the neighbor, his buddy in leather. like me, in leather. In a wet snow,
rocking. in a porch band leather. leather in April. April wet and still, one foot to the other.
About this poem
“I was lonely living in Northern Michigan; I found myself staring at my neighbors, watching their lives. Up there, sometimes I confused the people with the deer, with birds. When I was writing this poem I was thinking: but this bird smokes. And he’s white.” – francine j. harris
About francine j. harris
francine j. harris is the author of “play dead” (Alice James Books, 2016). She teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 francine j. harris. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
