Performed by Blake Friedman, Tenor and Ellie Kirk, Harp
Text by W. S. Di Piero
Snarls, bread trucks, yeast
breathing inside huddled bags,
and sleepers completing lives
behind their gray windows.
A whistle on the phonewires,
feathers, twitches, whistling
down to the hot loaves.
Reeds everywhere, pulse,
flesh, flutes, and wakened sighs.
An answer. Radio news
and breathers behind our windows,
birds’ new voices changing,
changed, to the unforgiving
hunger screech of immigrants.