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Green Parrot
Yes, the sex was deliciously yielding and we laughed about the overheated chill of our remoteness
on that pear-shaped island fixed in the Gulf Stream,
but when I think of you now and your green parrot,
gone over to that horizon scrim, nameless to the souls who prowl this dimension, I wonder did you once riven and spangle my flesh, or did I only invent that beach,
and the two of us, the perfume of anonymity and chance, or is some part of us still there, spellbound, sleek, imbedded in the drained radiation of not knowing
what we had to offer, thrashing out the odds of making the spirit rise from the tender, disappearing body?
If I can’t ask you, then who? Maybe your parrot still lives.
White’s fifth book of poems, All Good Water (Holy Cow! Press) was published in 2010. His poetry, essays, fiction, reviews, and interviews have appeared in publications including The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Nation, The Gettysburg Review, The Sewanee Review, The Georgia Review, The Mas- sachusetts Review, North American Review, Parnassus, Cimarron Review, Willow Springs, Crazyhorse, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and The New York Times. His debut novel, Every Boat Turns South, was published in 2009.
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