Archaeopteryx
By Matthew Hotham

I want to start with: “Summer swallows
stutter under the eaves,”

but I gave up ornithology
in the eighties.

Really, it was like this—
she struts up, peacock-walk,

all flutter and hollow bone,
with lizard so deep in her RNA

my mitochondria flinch.
Her kind traded their thunder

and lumber for the frilled baffles
of a new skirt.

She flicks a feather my way
and there’s me:

pigeon-toes
and bobbing head.

I play it like a red-winged blackbird,
all shadow until I bank,

then she’ll see how
I brag fire and flare.

But she’s already off
to another perch

keening over some dodo
I swear to make extinct.

——

Matthew Hotham is Managing Editor of Harvard Review and Poetry Editor of the online journal Slush Pile. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Meridian, Third Coast, anderbo.com, and 32 Poems, among others, and have been featured on Verse Daily. He has a chapbook, Early Art, which was published in 2006 by Turtle Ink Press.

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