Flower Conroy

Notes on The Weight of a Hummingbird

From mouth to mouth to mouth to 

grieve.  Interrupting life-

lines, a scar marks my left palm

from when, picking wildflowers in a field,

unbeknownst, I pulled at a thread 

of devil’s rope.  

First the sharp quill prick, 

then the surrounding 

thrum.  Frequently baroque expansiveness,

not mere ornament, writes Boll.  

It won’t be easy but I have to do it, admits

the speaker & it is raining leaves 

& blooms, it is raining leaves 

& blooms of blood because the wind 

like a scalpel excises them 

& they, beautiful-

severed bodies, tambourine & drum, fall 

in wind’s time.  

The coming-undone 

garland, the hands 

buried within the cavity, the sawbones 

lifting away 

sternum, lung, lung.  

Once the moon was marzipan;

a corsage; tinsel-

headed.  Once the moon was 

Shatter Me.  How does one recover

after?  Sometimes, one must 

receive emptiness for what it is.  More

artifact, like touched 

ellipses, a lock 

emptiness slips ungloved through, 

& the opening branches

revealing the suddenly—orchid—chambers.   

Elizabeth Bradfield