Vox Populi
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Mary B. Moore: The Birds of Cutting
I’m tired today and blue to boot.
Nothing buoys me, yesses my no’s.
Even the cardinal on the fence,
a dusky girl, isn’t all red
like cardinal boys,
and the blue jays are goading
the white cat.
Fur spiked and matted,
he won’t be hurried
or harried. Tail down, he slinks
finally under the porch.
The jays take off.
Like me, sometimes they’re louts.
All the birds I notice
are red and blue, like blood—
blue in, red out.
The blue that shadows my eyes
agrees with the blue
veining my wrists:
in is better than out.
Red bolds its course,
is high-res, heady and heedless,
and the little mouths
I cut on my arm, bleeding and being
bled, hurt me into feeling,
a festival of hurt.
Look at my red letters:
read me, tell me I am.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Mary B. Moore. From Amanda Chimera: Poems by Mary B. Moore (Madville, 2025). Winner of the 2023 Arthur Smith Prize for Poetry.
Mary B. Moore’s collections of poetry include Dear If, Flicker and The Book of Snow. She is married to the philosopher, John Vielkind. They live in Huntington WV with Seamus Heaney, the cat.
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“a festival of hurt” Oh!
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“The blue that shadows my eyes
agrees with the blue
veining my wrists:
in is better than out.”
I love how color(s) carry the narrative in this poem.
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Yes, isn’t it amazing?
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What an interesting choice from AMANDA CHIMERA. But everything Mary writes is rich and layered.
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Wonderful poem, wonderful book!!
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Oh, yes!
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“Red bolds its course,
is high-res, heady and heedless…” What a devastating poem.
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Oh, yes. I read the poem first for its playful music, barely realizing what its subject was. Now I see the playful music is a counterpoint to the ruin of obsession.
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I find it hard to believe that the author of this poem was ever a lout. True louts don’t know that’s what they are. I think of Marianne Moore’s “Birdwitted”.
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Thank you, Alfred. I’m touched by this poem, and I’m glad others are as well.
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I find this poem very moving. The subject of cutting oneself is powerful in itself, and this difficult subject is counterpointed by the playfulness of the language. I think of Plath’s poems: “You do not do. You do not do, old black shoe I lived in like a foot…”
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Redification by a thousand cuts. A cure for the blues? My blood thinner tells me No to slashing. There’s too much to lose.
If I had to choose a favorite bird, a bluejay would be near the top of that pecking order. I once saw a flock of hundreds down in a swale. Each bird seemed to fly from tree to tree at random. It was early October. They were training, I suppose, for the long haul. We too need to strengthen our wings for the tough journeys.
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“Birds are holes in heaven through which man may pass”
walter Inglis Anderson
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Love that quotation,. Sean.
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I thought of that quote as well, reading this poignant poem…Those six last words…
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