Allure

BY Kimiko Hahn

Unlike most birds, the loggerhead shrike
or butcher bird,

isn’t thwarted by the horned lizard
whose sharp skull spurs can pierce a throat.

Rather, the male impales those reptiles

on thorns or barbed wire —
displaying a larder for the ladies!

I know about such demonstrations:
the volumes on lust murder

my beloved bestowed on me that first brunch —
indicating a backlist.

That was it.

I had a few collections, myself:
one flaunted fishnets, another

a penchant for antique dental instruments.

You know what I’m talking about.

 

Biography

KIMIKO HAHN is the author of eight books of poems, including: Earshot (Hanging Loose Press, 1992), which was awarded the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize and an Association of Asian American Studies Literature Award; The Unbearable Heart (Kaya, 1996), which received an American Book Award; The Narrow Road to the Interior (W.W. Norton, 2006); and Toxic Flora (W.W. Norton, forthcoming 2010). She is a recipient of a number of fellowships and awards, such as the PEN/Voelcker Award, The Shelley Memorial Prize and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award. She is a distinguished professor in the English Dept. and the MFA Program at Queens College, The City University of New York. Her poems in Cerise Press were inspired by and in some cases quoted from the science section of The New York Times.

Related

 

Printed from Cerise Press: http://www.cerisepress.com

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