As a child, fresh out of the hospital
with tape covering the left side
of my face, I began to count birds.
At age fifty the sum total is precise
and astonishing, my only secret.
--Jim Harrison, Counting Birds
Disease writes its atrocious modifications, the endless sentence,
that tears fibers, burns in its net, overwhelming,
spreading in the body's intimate passageways, making alveolae burst
in silence...
--David Huerta, from November Notebook, 1976
listen, you will
hear the deafening song of the stars
a silence brilliant and ringing as ice
a lovesong, it seems, made out of no love
and no song,
and the earth here to hear it.
Tobey Hiller, Night
Featuring: Louise Erdrich, William Stafford, Jim Harrison, Aimé
Césaire, Harry Smallenburg, Duane Niatum, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joseph
Nechvatal, Donald Schenker, Lennart Bruce, Marilyn Chin, Ronnie Burk, Dieter
Weslowski, Norman Russell, Stephen Ratcliffe, Steve Crow, Clayton Eshleman,
Don Berger, Lawrence R. Smith, Antonio Porta, Matthew Ernst, Simon Ortiz,
Francisco Hernández, David Huerta, Lucy Tapahonso, Fred Miller, Christina-Marie,
Kenneth Lincoln, Ted Lardner, Tobey Hiller, Jerome Rothenberg, James Drake,
Harry Smallenburg, Brian Swann, Jim Pepper, Austin Strauss
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