I finally made it through the birds the birds by Samuel Ace

Sometimes we are told that the shorter the poem, the stronger and more inventive the language must be. But what about the longer poem, the longer poem that thrives in an age of reduced attention and spectacular distraction? “I finally made it through the birds the birds” is such a thriving poem. It is both dense and porous. The depth of content is built in, but so is the breathing room of form. This poem asks more of the reader than the average strong poem, the average inventive poem, and does so confidently, knowing the reader will be rewarded with “tiny teacups” and “two-story hopes,” a “lakegray / sky” and a “priest of light.” Also: “it took a chair it / took all the took / a failure so great all / the teeth the tomorrows.” And: “it took / a prism and the first time I saw blue.” Here I find a delicate and purposeful architecture, a poem alive, layered, vented, and irreducible.
—Judge Julie Marie Wade on LAR Fall Poetry Award winner “I finally made it through the birds the birds” by Samuel Ace

December 21^st 11:20:45 pm

I finally made it through the birds the
birds  the wings of rest   the v in the sky
the treads on treads   I finally made it
through the prisms I was trained to see
at 3   the pictures of Lassie shaking in
black and white   the curtained haloes of
purple and red   the birds the birds   my
guides   my sling out from the lakegray
sky   leaving me to a priest of light   a
port of standing   the roads   the crest
the pier   the birds the birds   I know a
reach   a rule   a whisper   a liar   the
trees   the smoke   the two-story hopes
the reservation of skies   the door to the
aviary where I finally made it through
where it took a farm   it took a chair   it
took all the took   a failure so great   all
the teeth   the tomorrows   the hands so
chapped and split from cleaning fluids
I finally made it through the glass of
scotch the birds the birds flew off the
pier   a whisper over the water   it took
a prism and the first time I saw blue   I
look back as if this were the last time I
will see these rooms   the green glazes
the mustard rugs   the tiny teacups and
hanging glass   I made it through after
having dropped from the lakegray sky
I made it through to the aviary where
the birds flew away in a whisper and I
was left with a prism   a draft in the eyes
I finally made it through after being
dropped from the sky by the side of the
road   our draft at a life   the whisper
the halo   the tomorrows   the birds the
birds   the whisper of whales   of
prairies   the moths   the windows
the dirty walls

Samuel Ace is a genderqueer poet, sound artist, photographer and teacher. He has published three collections of poetry: Normal Sex, Home in Three Days, Don’t Wash, and most recently Stealth, with poet Maureen Seaton. He is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, two-time finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Poetry, winner of the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award in Poetry, The Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in poetry. He was also a recent finalist for the National Poetry Series. His work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in or is forthcoming from Fence, Vinyl, Plume, Aufgabe, Atlas Review, Mandorla, Volt, Ploughshares, Eoagh, Spiral Orb, Kenyon Review, Everyday Genius, Rhino, 3:am, Versal, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Eleven Eleven, Tupelo Quarterly, The Volta, Devouring the Green, Troubling the Line: Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, and Best American Experimental Poetry 2016. He lives in Tucson, AZ, and is currently a Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA. His work can be found at www.samuelace.com.