A Tufted Titmouse by Michele Lesko | Poetry

Poetry – Issue 12 | June 2011

A Tufted Titmouse

by Michele Lesko

You are at home in a mob
attracted by others calling
you out. Your PETER-PETER-PETER
a song any slight bird can sing.
No ascending trill gone unmatched

just the usual birds. Yours is a beer
song, an all-occasion, feather-
my-nest with any quicksilver thing:
some hung-over chick’s discarded
pull-tab plucked from high grass.

Black hair long enough to spiral
your nest’s walls. The object
of her undoing your bright spot
amid long days of sophomore girls
who hear only their own shame

in the song you sing at dawn. Used
up notes repeated ad nauseum.
They say you are common, a tit-
mouse, a comely bird performing
acrobatics in an unruly crowd.

Michele Lesko has travelled to many of the world’s most well-known cities (London, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo, Honolulu & Manhattan) but found her trip to Tokyo with her sons, ages two & sixteen, to visit her eldest son, age seventeen, to be the most profound travel experience of her life. Her poetry & short stories have been published in The Avatar Review, Pedestal Magazine, Soundzine, The Southern California Review, and The Yalobousha Review.

Read our current issue, Issue 12 | June 2011:

Literary Bohemian

Poetry – Issue 12 | June 2011