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Friday, November 1, 2013

Poem-A-Day: Tigers by Melissa Ginsburg

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November 1, 2013
Tigers
by Melissa Ginsburg
 
 
for Erik Lemke (1979-2012)
 
 
1. A hummingbird flies into a window 
that looks like the sky. Everything around here 
 
looks like the sky. The sky looks tiger striped. 
They call that kind of cloud 
 
something. I know somebody 
who knows about clouds. I could find 
 
out the name. Everything around here 
has a name. 
 
 
 
2. 
 
The hummingbird fell to the deck. My husband picked it up. 
 
--What did it feel like in your hand? 
--Nothing. It felt like nothing. 
--Where is it now? 
--Gone.
--Dead? 
--Not dead. It flew away. It disappeared and it disappeared again. 
 
 
 
3. 
 
I'll tell you a joke. A hummingbird flew into a window... 
 
I'll tell you another joke. Treachery, 
we were friends once. 
 
 
 
4. 
 
In dreams the bird 
weighs more, so you can feel it 
 
when you pick it up. So when 
it dies it seems 
 
like something actually happened. 
It's a word 
 
bound 
around your hand and a sign 
 
at the stripped road. 
A mylar star on a plastic stick 
 
tied to the sign. 
Blacktop. Post. A fat star's 
 
wrinkles 
taut. It's stuffed. 
 
It's shining. 
There's going 
 
to be a party around here somewhere. 
The bird weighs nothing waits nowhere. 
 
The sky looks like a window and it flies right through.

 

 

 

Copyright © 2013 by Melissa Ginsburg. Used with permission of the author.

 

About This Poem
"'Tigers' is an elegy for my friend, the poet Erik Lemke, who was as sharp and funny and caring as anyone I've met. This poem is an attempt to apprehend his death, a loss so sudden and nonsensical it seemed impossible. 

Here are some lines from a poem of Erik's, 'Still Life with Straw and Rags':

...in the evening, in the darkness, 
dreaming of the stunned robin, 
how the bird's feathers had caught 
in the rings of its hands"

--Melissa Ginsburg
Most Recent Book by Ginsburg


(Four Way Books, 2013) 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem-A-Day
Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.  

Melissa Ginsburg is the author of Dear Weather Ghost (Four Way Books, 2013). She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Mississippi.

 

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