By Angie Macri

I have dripped wax on the ends of birds’ wings,
melting what was solid with fever.
They eat everything from last year
yet stay hungry, and the red of the wax
gives them color unlike their bodies

as they keep moving. Call me a god then
with each whistle. I can list the reasons
clear as they are, in temperatures higher 
than normal, the body with virus, the planet 
from one generation to another. Call god then

to forgive us for being hungry,
for longing for movement and consumption
that sets the edge of the world itself
on fire, like a newspaper an adult once held
and lit. We watched the stories burning.

Angie Macri is the author of Sunset Cue (Bordighera), winner of the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize, and Underwater Panther (Southeast Missouri State University), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs and teaches at Hendrix College.