Sometimes, I love a poem so much I want to crawl inside it and live there in a very tangible way, but because poems are words, I’ll have to let them live inside me. If you’ve ever felt displaced, replaced, misplaced, unplaced, out-of-place … then, well, you’ll feel this poem. Y. Madrone writes of the pigeon, the tulip: “Residing on every continent but unclaimed: / not native or belonging // to anyone.” It feels good to belong, to be claimed or spoken for, and trying to navigate your way through self-realization can make a person feel wholly unplaceable. As Madrone writes, the tulips and pigeons are the most prolific, are never alone in their displacement. We all seek the same sort of belonging.
—-
Tulip is the bravest flower, I mean bird.
Pigeon is an everywhere
bird. Residing on every continent but unclaimed:
not native or belonging
to anyone, country specifically.
Considered feral, or an invasive one.
However wild or native birds
have guaranteed laws: protection.
If you’re wild now but have ever been domestic
your safety’s uncertain.
This must be a blanket,
as in assumption.
Pigeon remains a stateless bird.
And so are we, sort of. Tulips:
most prolific worldwide.
—-
Rebellious Women in Poetry (brought to you by rebellious women) is made possible by rebellious women. “Tulip is the bravest flower, I mean bird.” first appeared in Gulf Coast and on Verse Daily. Y. Madrone co-founded The Thank You Writers Reading Series. They have too many day jobs and inconsistently write for their blog, Notes of a Compulsive Self-Disclosurist. Read too much about them at: ymadrone.wordpress.com. The introduction is by Jessica Dyer, a writer & editor who lives in Chicago.
