by Tara Bray

Once we went for a cool drink.
It’s hot as hell, she said—
like she’d known me years—
her office air conditioner on the blink.

She carried a flute,
called me a bit
of a thing, said she’d play
a ditty, pulled out the glint,

though her lips full and clumsy,
her fingers thick, but tricky.
She warbled that flute
sounding like the bird itself,

the one with the beak
like a piccolo tip-tipping
the notes, butter markings
on its crown, rump, wings.

When I, handsewn girl
of few words,
warbled beside her
I felt my own body

lift for the trees.

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Tara Bray is the author of Small Mothers of Fright (LSU Press, 2015) and Mistaken For Song (Persea Books, 2009). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Narrative Magazine, Agni, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, New England Review, and The Hudson Review, among others.