The Regional Dialects of Songbirds
by Christopher Corbett


He was such a good man that people hated to see him coming.
-Mark Twain

Richard,

If I didn't have a friend on this planet
you, by default, would be a savior to me.
But as is, you're just a savior to everybody else.
Drinking in a house of dolls last night,
I met a young girl from Chicago
who can even form a smile
when she's gone down on me.
She's out for the summer on a mission
of diplomacy, counting spots on a bird,
extinct in the absence of light.

She says she doesn't miss the comforts of regret
because she's never had any intention of giving them up.
I laugh extra hard to show her I've been practicing myself.

Richard,

I don't care if they've uncovered me.
They never had to be told, chastised, forgiven.
of thoughts like these that fracture ambition.
They can look me in the eye and not say this.
And then we smile as if we'd ever know
in the distance, the strange song of birds.







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