10
Parrots announcing
Dinosaur hooks on wing crooks
Life upon life
Insect chords
A fork-tailed wood nymph
You say A double-toothed kite?
Pink bulbs
You say Fishtail palm
Large leaves dropping
A march of holes across a leaf
Scanning for monkeys
You say I don’t like the sounds here
You say We can use that leaf as sandpaper to smooth
You say Can you tell ruddy?
You say Someone said that about passenger pigeons
You say Rail in the trail
You say Over here, who is this?
A cooperative spider web
You say Up in the tangle?
You say There’s something flycatching
A rusty see-saw
You say What’s green with a yellow belly?
You say Why do we call ours oxbow?
A summer kitchen
A coquette
A long-tailed tyrant
Frolicking between the chiggers
Another kind of nightjar
The call dropping from major to minor
A high whistle
You say I do like talking to owls
You say It is the hour of commotion
You say Because it happened after dinner
Lemon-throated
Chestnut-eared
Pale-legged
You say I remember the name, so I know I saw it
Plain-wing
White-browed
You say That was the black-throated
You say What about fruit?
Slender-footed
Pink-throated
Hooded
Masked crimson
Golden-belly
You say Female, in the morning
Rusted-back
Yellow-rumped
Olive
You say That’s actually all about the birds
11
You say One of my toes is still wet
Silver water against early
Rain, a rooster-call
The sweet swept air
Thunder fall
You say Again, again, don’t go by the name
Honking the bends
A new kind of monkey
The mountains greening at approach
You say Like dirt’s going to do any good and stay
A police checkpoint
Marbles
The grass dried gold
Filtered light
Clay brick
An alphabet chalked
A woman weaving
Ruins down
Trees arrow-straight against the severe slope
Two poles holding hay against the hill
A pink house
You say We didn’t check in on the vultures
A city lined with hillside stars
12
Cobblestones
Pale-vented
Double-faced ring
Magpie
The weighted hand
You say An armada of whales
Russet-backed
Lineated
You work a more elaborate list
Undulated
Palm-throated
Yellow-browned
One shade meeting another
Stephanie Anderson is the author of four chapbooks, including In the Particular Particular (winner of the 2006 DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press Chapbook Prize) and The Nightyard(winner of the 2009 Noemi Press Chapbook Prize). A full-length book, In the Key of Those Who Can No Longer Organize Their Environments, is forthcoming in Summer 2013 with Horse Less Press. She edits Projective Industries.