Magpie’s Dazzling / The Magpie Draws its Sorrow Line / Don’t Call Me Noo-Noo
[poetry]
Magpie’s Dazzling
when the magpie comes
he skulks behind his splendor
listen as he mirrors your tongue
careful, your ear, to the mummer
The Magpie Draws its Sorrow Line
The woman who suddenly
loved me and just
as suddenly, didn’t, perches
on the thin horizon
of a painting
that is not a painting,
but a digital artifact
of the painting
never painted,
sits—static,
without affect, frozen,
her matted black
and white feathers
retracted, stiff, arrested even,
not flying, and without joy.
She christens as bird,
and yet, not a ladybird,
just an ordinary Catholic,
with accompanying complications.
Her single, lackluster eye
points downward,
fixed on some unseen
thing, an unfortunate bug
or shiny wrapper.
She rests, unmappable,
and yet knowing,
self-possessed,
with her cached secrets,
a tiny black smutch
on a severed timeline
truncated by a printer,
a genetic script,
an illness,
a mystery.
Hers.
My muse is dead and yet I write.
Don’t call me noo-noo.
Doesn’t matter
if it’s child, a male member,
or affection. Muse is dead
and took her magpies with her
to the otherworld of England,
weighted by coins
released into the sea
shiny, bright and tinned,
(unwelcome burdens).
Sudden droppings, tumble
in sad slow motion,
their flecked hope’s final showing.
Discarded and forgotten,
keys to nowhere good or bad,
onward, onward, onward,
your fleet of voidness in formation,
seeking distractions,
people to get lost in
for the fraction you were here,
trinkets in abundance.
My muse is dead and yet
I write.
Don’t call me noo-noo.
Save it for your black and white
feathered friends, new muses,
poetic projections, pretend lovers.
My muse
is dead and yet I write
the magpie speaks its tongues
and parrots seductive sorrow songs
to tin cans, candy wrappers
and coppers.
Don’t call me Inunu, nunu, noo-noo,
in English or in Zulu,
oh horrible objects.
I am not them. How can you
be gone?
Koss is a queer writer, fine artist, and designer with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They have work in Entropy, Diode, The Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, Lunch Ticket and others—plus a book coming in 2020 from Negative Capability Press. Keep up with Koss on Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular.
