Erica Pederson // Poetry

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The Gift

I recline on the outside of my bones.
Like a feather, light brushes
this soft pulp of being.
I sing.

Through my voice, a man is walking.
Earth and stone fall backward for his step.
My voice swells,
a beautiful tingling passes through me.

The man arrives at his building.
Pigeons fly from the stooped,
flat roof. The man pauses at the door
to check his suit.

Lonely, I sing
into the blundering arch
of the dappled pigeon's flight.
The world, as I know it,

arrives in the swooping
countercurrent
of chord and flock.
Here is a new man, in overalls,

with cumbersome midsection,
throwing crumbs
from scraped hands. Wind falls
through my brown, dilated lungs.

The sky is overcast.
I sing an old Laotian woman,
gray hair curled tightly to her skull,
turtle-like neck leaning forward.

I am lonely. I sing
the slow proliferation of rain.
Fruits and vegetables carted
from the littered sidewalks.

Emergence of snails.
Black octaves of umbrellas.
And still, I sing the next
musculature, the next red arrow.

Grasshoppers are leaping by the stream.
Children stare
from an improvised shelter of cardboard.
I sing the next one walking

along the furrows of my spine.
Like folded wings,
I offer layers and names. I sing
the next one walking, and the next.

Erica Pedersen received her MFA from Eastern Washington University in 1998. She has published poetry in many journals including Phoebe, the Sierra Nevada College Review, Third Coast, Words of Wisdom, and Ibbetson Street. She is currently an English language teacher at a refugee resettlement office.

Date of Publication: 22 Nov 2006