Michael Burkard
We Have to Talk About Another Book

The boy's glasses were very very thick. 

He was thinking of this life and the next and the next. 

The yellow city bus drove by the blue-by-morning river 

but the boy did not see the bus from this perspective. 

Two blackbirds have more space than they can handle. 

No one knows time this way the way the blackbirds do. 

No one knows no one: a blade of grass 

is the blade in the grass. The boy stands in his ghost. 

One of the blackbirds is now thick with the river. 

Some of the branches make love like an awkward couple. 

Or like a couple juxtaposed against the window, which 

isn't unusual, but the window is juxtaposed against 

branches, 

and the branches are making more sounds than usual. 

Things become is. 

We don't have to make a sentence if we don't want to. 

 
Found In Volume 28, No. 03
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  • Michael Burkard
Michael Burkard
About the Author

Michael Burkard teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.  Among his books are My Secret Boat (W.W. Norton), Unsleeping (Sarabande Books), and Pennsylvania Collection Agency (New Issue Press).  His poems appear in Bat City Review, Parakeet, and 88.