<\/p>\n
Birds<\/span><\/strong> They scrape and bill for answers They don\u2019t flutter against my desires only stare my doubts with little eyes a stripped choir of town\u2019s winter a milky whiteness of nude bodies\u2014 These birds I see cloister you They drop our histories <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Rizwan Akhtar<\/strong> works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan. He completed his PhD in postcolonial literature from the University of Essex, UK in 2013. He has published poems in well-established poetry magazines of the UK, Wales, US, India, Canada, and New Zealand. He has also done a 5 weeks workshop on poetry with Derek Walcott at the University of Essex in 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Birds for you They scrape and bill for answers I peck evenings for small words finches and robins temper tones They don\u2019t flutter against my desires Or rise from foggy halos like sentences blurring intentions only stare my doubts with little eyes over ponds of petaled flowers carrying conviction under feathers a stripped choir […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[136,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13795"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13796,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13795\/revisions\/13796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nfor you<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n
\nI peck evenings for small words
\nfinches and robins temper tones<\/span><\/p>\n
\nOr rise from foggy halos
\nlike sentences blurring intentions <\/span><\/p>\n
\nover ponds of petaled flowers
\ncarrying conviction under feathers <\/span><\/p>\n
\nland on raven craggy earth
\nsank in scrimped necks<\/span><\/p>\n
\nclamp beaks against an urgent silence
\nof blue, red, and magenta quills<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhuddle like expressions
\nmuted by long flights<\/span><\/p>\n
\ntied to footnotes, on vague wings.<\/span><\/p>\n