The Starling, by Taunja Thomson

I Am Through Taking Leftovers, by Lorette C. Luzajic (Canada), 2016. Click on image for Etsy link to original.

​The Starling

Cut-out comic strips    rainy afternoon squiggles    smears of lipstick
photos with marker-blackened faces    stray feathers
spilled paint--
I have given up these shreds and shards
these puzzles pieces   these fragments 
of finger pointing
self-guided self-aimed missiles
missives on my failures.
Instead I will unite them    quilt a bird
with a humour-lined face
a wingful of white-hot sun
a body coloured with waterfall-
curtained haikus
and opal eyes whose lustre
shifts between twilit forest
midday ocean    desert sky
devoured by stars.
The canvas opens to catch my starling
fling it out to corners    splash it in the centre    its sheen flashing purpose.

​Taunja Thomson
​
This poem was written for the 20 Poem Challenge.

Taunja Thomson: "My poetry has most recently appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic and will be featured in the September 2016 issue of Halcyon Days.  Two of my poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Award:  “Seahorse and Moon” in 2005 and “I Walked Out in January” in 2016.  I have co-authored a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry which has recently been accepted for publication and have a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter"