Amanda Dettmann is an English major at Marist College in New York. Her poetry has appeared in the Mosaic and Angles, and she has a published poetry book titled Untranslatable Honeyed Bruises. She is also involved in theatre at her college and recently returned from a semester abroad in Florence, Italy.
Feathered
A man at my dad’s work slathered
glue over his entire hairy body.
This is true. My dad’s a psychiatrist.
The man undressed outside, at midnight,
planting himself in the vegetable garden
as a human scarecrow.
He was the birdseed, and they came,
all twenty birds came
to rest
on his naked
sticky body.
He had company.
At midnight.
The glow of twenty birds
covering his tremors
and twitching chin.
He stayed there until morning.
Stripped
but blanketed in feathers.
And they came,
all twenty doctors with restraints
and baggy pants and a blue hospital gown
belts buttons velcro
zippers for his mouth
they came like biting crows
and not like the birds
they came.
For they came to suffocate, not cloak.
For they came to smother, not shower in plumage.
The twenty came because they had always
been taught to come.
The nurses,
head specialists,
medical advisors.
Ones still in training were even there.
They thought they were gluing
the man back together.
All they did was deny
his new wings.