Jan Wiezorek writes from Michigan. His debut poetry chapbook, Forests of Woundedness, is forthcoming this fall from Seven Kitchens Press. Wiezorek’s poetry appears, or is forthcoming, in The London Magazine, The Westchester Review, Lucky Jefferson, The Broadkill Review, LEON Literary Review, and elsewhere. He taught writing at St. Augustine College, Chicago, and authored the teachers’ ebook Awesome Art Projects That Spark Super Writing (Scholastic, 2011). Wiezorek’s poetry has been awarded by the Poetry Society of Michigan.
Not the One to Ask
I am not the one to ask about that.
And I don’t know why life goes
as it does, or where to put emotions,
how they fit, if they do, in my brain
like omens from a brown hawk called
Northern Harrier, circling around,
circling back, ten feet off the ground,
as prayers heard in the sometime
heights of me—where I can’t seem
to relax on a page of word-wings—
no, I am not the person to ask omens
to show us how, partially, and then
in full confusion, winging, dipping
our way, shaking the limbs, no one
asking why because we’re not
the ones to ask. Even so, even if you
were, how could you speak the words
—or even tell me what they mean?
With Evidence
After weeks with no evidence
of activity, I removed twigs
from the wren house. I cleaned
and rehung it outside the gazebo
near the back porch. It caused
the wrens to sing and, it seems,
to panic. So many sticks to fill
the house again. So many hours
of fidgeting with the smallest
pieces, to fit them through the hole.
This is what celebration is in song
—like dryer lint traded for spider’s
egg sack. But, I hope, it will be
a fit home. With so many dummy
houses—wrens filling birdhouses
with twigs so other birds can’t use
them until such time as this—
maybe this is the time and place
for birds to live here—so we can
make writing the social act it is
meant to be. You read and listen,
and I sit with you, on a porch
—with evidence.
