Poetry by Stephen Scott Whitaker

                Sue Thompson CC



Bird/Brain
​
Welling up through chest 
and throat,  four 

cardinals in a tree. Repeating thoughts
about nothing. Singing I 

am here, I am here, I am singing
this. I am here and I am hungry

and my pain is that which is old
in my mind and old in me, a seizing 

threat to chain up the breath, a seizing 
mind to size up the jaw. All 

is estranged, nothing belongs. To me, 
every step is a step away from death 

and a step towards another dying. All day.
Every day. Repeating thoughts about nothing

I am here, I am here, I am here thinking
and cardinals are singing, a mind repeating

songs for the sake of repeating because 
singing is letting go of a body 

and letting go of a body is the last lesson in a series 
of lessons about what it is to be flesh 

at a time when old pain is still enough 
to withdraw into cardinal points as birds might

in the middle of the afternoon, singing about themselves
to whoever listens, we are here, you are here 

too, will you share the mind of a bird and sing
along for the sake of singing along, all day, all day?

​
​

Stephen Scott Whitaker (@SScottWhitaker) is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the co-editor of The Broadkill Review.  A teaching artist with the Virginia Commission for the Arts, an educator, and a grant writer, Whitaker’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Rumpus, The Maine Review, Great River Review, Oxford Poetry, The Best of Helios Quarterly & The Southern Poetry Review Series: Virginia. Mulch, a novel of weird fiction is forthcoming from Montag Press in 2021. 

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