Stranded in the Sirens by Haze Fry (California)

​These ducks should look prettier than they do
to me.
Because everyone else smiles
when they see glints of brown rice feathers, giggles
when the wood chips cuddle in the wind.
And I just sit here stranded
in the sirens.
Does it not hurt you to open your jaw?

---

​Do you not cry
when your fingers must drizzle atop keys
and attempt to make words
sound like a wizard’s swaying hair?
My energy is like an empty bird feeder,
hanging from a lonely tree beside an abandoned home.
This is what therapy should sound like.
But I won’t allow myself to be a poet
when I speak.
I won’t allow myself to let my eyes do more than burn.
I can be glow in the dark,
electric green, or the yellow of a stray cat’s eyes.
I simply will not tell you
that I do not really have powers,
and I am going no where besides the graveyard,
or the lab where scientists will dissect me.
If I am rabid please let me go
and put a chip in my ear so someone remembers me
as I train myself to bite bullfrogs
and eat ducks under the shade of the sun.
I am not written in the handwriting of fame.
I am spelled incorrectly,
a child’s attempt at cursive,
and I am the genie that died in the bottle.
Do not ask me to bleed
because I might turn hollow and anemic,
an invertebrate consuming itself.
Each time we speak I want to die more than the last time.
So please let me die while the sun is still out,
because once it’s foggy
​I might wish I was alive again.