I learned a lot about birds from my mother. How, to help preen, you can use nails to bring up new shoots, new plumes. How a domiciled bird needs attachment. If depressed, they may take to plucking. Only after I had exhausted other options: my teddy bear, my dolls, fake lashes pulled one by one, sometimes in groupings, did I begin with my own hair. Instead of listening in math class, I'd pull an eyelash, feel the eyelid snap back into place. Better was the tug of scalp. On a good day, the root intact, I'd run strands through my nail-bed, a satisfying grit to it. The problem with the body — there's more of it. * If I had been older, would I have let him follow through with it. I was twenty and manic and had mostly quit hurting myself. Is there still a buzz underneath, like when I'd pick the body, the pain a grounding rod. Don't anchor me and anchor me is said in the same way. When I told him, No, he was preening the part that needed to feel alive. I let him do it. * In Oklahoma, my brother killed a falcon by accident. He wasn't careful with the muzzle, where it pointed. * Where the inside bled out, I can still taste. The bird's inner ear is the same — small amounts of iron in neurons help it find North. If I let the wound run too long, the skin cracks where iron dries. * My brother said it took a week for the falcon's mate to stop crowning his head in oak, circling wings to keep a constant reminder over his daily course to the library. He'd sit, wait for its kik- kik with no response. * When my mother scratches new shoots, in appreciation, the bird's beak unhinges. I know the release of jaw. I know how ball joints work, * how they snap. When I tell them I didn't want to be with men who punch me, they cry as though I'd been the one with hands around neck. I still wonder, does the choke make coming better knowing you made another woman stop breathing. * There's fire under my skin — A young bird imprints on the sun, stars to orient. I used him as a landmark. The problem with pain is that it's necessary as a point of reference. What was North back then was a clustered fist. I'm told I look like a bird, he laughed, traced my youth- scar with his nose, described the "olfactory map." A bird's eyes interact with the brain in its "Cluster N." That's how they know where to fly. I needed his fists to know, what I wanted, did it exist.

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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