Egg V: Hatching
This morning, I am frozen by the fecundity of birds:
their binge-drunk chorus is already Greek
and monstrous as Sirens, even before
the sun catches up with the day. What if
they sing through the window and into the bed
where I lie curdled – corvine murder feathering
shades of black on my scratchy skin, etch-a-sketching me
into a nest? What if a startlement of sparrows
invades me, guddles my genes
unzips my DNA, and sturnine murmurs
lace me back up; corset and coddle me ovoid
fertile, and incubating in the heat of dreams? Such dreams
such lurid heat could birth a phoenix:
but I would be the abject daughter
of recombinant alchemy, the one chimeric sparrow who falls
and God doesn’t notice.
Morgaine Mech Lleuad is a poet/novelist, and lectures in poetry and creative writing at Exeter University and the OU, respectively. Her poetry has been published in various magazines, including Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, Iota, Ink Sweat & Tears and The Frogmore Papers.