THE BIRDS WE PILED LOOSELY • ISSUE 10 • JANUARY 2017

THE TAP
by Merridawn Duckler
I went to press my lips to your lips
or actually to the lip of the free conference
water bottle you drank from and dropped;
I was hoping for an anointment or at least contact.
But when I closed my eyes to kiss
suddenly I saw the Pacific Garbage Patch
which may or may not be a huge, floating wreck
of discarded plastic bottles, possibly the size of Texas,
gamboling the great ocean. Should we be really be drinking
from this un-wreckable stuff, the captured drops
of what is wrecking us? I sat an absurdly
long time, with your lip print a short distance from mine.
I remembered what I’d always said about courage.
and what you said about recycling. Sure, seals drown in
that vast, plastic invisible, are ghost fishing but here was my breath
seeking your breath from a source you’d abandoned, too.
THE BROKEN RECORD I WANT TO SOUND LIKE
by Patrick Williams
The broken record I want to sound like is shattered,
but it is also warped. It is also in New Jersey, and
it is only an idea.
The broken record I want to sound like is important,
but it was panned by most critics. It is also the darling
of several particular critics who will never be born.
The broken record I want to sound like is time-based,
but its pieces have been stacked atop one another,
representing “only now.”
The broken record I want to sound like is exasperating,
but it also gives life. It is also pill-shaped, and
is hidden among other pill-shaped things.
The broken record I want to sound like is silent,
but only for the moment, while we wait for machinery
to be built to play it.
The broken record I want to sound like is distasteful,
but it is what others expect of me. It is also outside
of my control.
The broken record I want to sound like is predictable,
it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is also
locked away in storage closet at a school closed years ago.
The broken record I want to sound like is growing,
but at a rate microseconds slower
than everything else. It is also turning to dust.
The broken record I want to sound like is hexagonal,
but I’ve only seen it through a kaleidoscope. Someone
told me that makes it more real.
The broken record I want to sound like is arbitrary,
and contains mostly static. It also contains the plans
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