for my brother by Ana Pugatch

before you i lived in a world of birds.
i cannot say that i was lonely, but i was

alone, bearing witness to their color
and sound. i drew their shapes, listened in,

couldn’t care about faces or words.
before your birth i saw a white peacock

with its spontaneous arc of plumage. i knew
what that rattling meant—recognized

his halo-crown, what the future would give
to me. out of the feathers grew the familiar

warmth of spring, the petals of a magnolia
tree—its many limbs unfurling into lightness.

Ana Pugatch is currently the Poetry Heritage Fellow at George Mason University in Virginia. She is a Harvard graduate who taught in China and Thailand for several years. Her recent work can be found in The Bangalore Review, PØST-, and The Esthetic Apostle.