24 Nov From the Trees Full of Birdsong Comes Unripe Fruit by Albert Abonado
after Rick Barot
How I start a prayer: with the same hand I use
to lift food to my mouth, I draw a line down
to my diaphragm, pulling a zipper or curtain string
to reveal the small wolf in my belly, the one I feed
fat and vinegar. This is also how I pray: at eleven, I leapt
off the awning of my house. It was autumn
and everything that surrounded me collapsed
back into the dirt. I wanted to practice
my falling, feel the earth bend beneath my arrival, convinced
I would not break. When my mother prays
in her garden after the surgery on her arm and neck,
I listen to her bones grinding against her skin.
She plants tulips, brushes a root from her hair, slices
for dinner that evening the garlic and onions she will sauté
in a wok with ground beef. And this, too, is a prayer,
my father rolling up his sleeve to reveal the long scar
on his arm to a room full of strangers at the garage
where they kept the wreckage of his car—a prayer
about the flesh around a knuckle and the alloys
the body will not reject. By prayer
I mean I read the same poem over and over,
until my hair becomes sloppy with poem, that I eat
it slowly until it coats my mouth. All of my prayers begin
with hunger, a prayer in the shape of cold
Popeye’s at my uncle’s wake, in the blood stew I fail
to replicate. My wife wants to know why I reduce my poems
to something that fits in my mouth. I don’t tell her I buried
my relatives in my throat, that my prayers belong to other voices.
When I pray, I can’t hear my acid reflux gurgle, but the trees
full of birdsong, the tires hiss as they pass over a wet
road. This is a prayer full of rain and fog, weather soaked through
my old shoes, the thin fabric that contains the storm beneath my feet.
If by prayer we also mean the stories that we did not know
came before us, then this is also a prayer: my father stepping
away while they lowered his father into the ground
as we tossed white flowers onto his coffin, the hour
in which my brothers and I turned to one another and asked
where did he go, what is he doing now?
About the Poet
Albert Abonado is a poet and essayist based in Rochester, NY. He is the author of JAW (Sundress Publications 2020) and Field Guide for Accidents (Beacon Press, 2024), a National Poetry Series selection. He holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars. He has received fellowships for poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
His work has appeared in numerous journals including Boston Review, Colorado Review, The Laurel Review, The Margins, Triquarterly, Waxwing, Zone 3, and others. This is the first poem in his new collection Field Guide for Accidents.
Albert lives and teaches at SUNY Geneseo and Finger Lakes Community College, where he is the Managing Editor of the Bare Hill Review. Starting in the fall of 2024, he started as the artist in residence at SUNY Oswego. He is the former Director of Adult Programs at Writers & Books.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.