EMILY TODER

 
 
PELICANS IN AUSTRALIA

A bunch of pelicans stay in the landscape
a bit and a bunch move out

flying elsewhere thinking elsewhere
has more food I guess

The birds that stay in the
landscape a bit

it is not that they later drop
it is not that they hum

like hummingbirds
they don’t hover

It is not that they’re suspended
there like children

wish, it is not like they are children,
they are patient and dark black in the blue

This is in Australia and in the season
when no rains come

lakes suck into pits
irises in the eyes cake

and eventually a pair of jackals arrives
and it is thought

that they are brothers
and their heads are soft
and beige

and the birds that have stayed
they tear those birds apart
 
 
 
 
PELICANS

You know even in the midst of this
I don’t care

if I never see one

because I am haunted by my dream
I sit bolt upright in my car
because I am haunted by my dream

They live very far away from me
and my wanderlust

is not growing every day
It is abating, now it is thrilling

for me just to go down the hall
and watch the light on the tile roll ever forward

this glimmer like a stripe of gold
yes, tracing the terrible blue-speckled floor

and almost running down it
sometimes when I am eager to move

and it is the light that moves

My research is very sloppy

and actually I just found out
there are pelicans not very far from here

at all, who have the gaping throats
and the mean eyes I like

and who have the black webs
and the cramped chins I like

and who gather on the shore in the way
I like and who stand in the empty air

making no meaning which I like
but their young which I like
and who I like