Miriam Sagan

The Cage Bird cage of air Cage of photographs of horses' heads Black and white, like the year you were born What the Vikings, who liked to kill, called Cage of bone Cage of thyroid and estrogen Cage of lactation and postpartum Cage of lymph, marrow, corpuscle, a deformed Head of the femur Collapsed lung-- Cage of: you believe this to be you-- The past, a rickety lift In a Parisian hotel A bar in Mexico City Christmas Eve on the rim of an Arizona copper mine As if suddenly, you saw from the air Grid of the street map of the block you were born on Or the Persian rug of your Russian grandmother Whose lines you traced as a child, over and over The bars of this cage are bent and imperfect No Golden Mean, no Acropolis Birdcage of rain Birdcage of regret Like the cities that come and go along a river

Roshan Houshmand The Cage

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Issue #12, November, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.