BIRDS
A 7-color reduction linocut
8" x 12" print size
11" x 15" paper size
Hand printed on BFK Rives paper
Edition: 14
Sold unframed
Price includes shipping within the U.S.
A copy of the poem will come with the print.
BIKER BIRD
Tough. Tattooed. She’s not the type to set foot
in an art gallery. More likely to step off a Harley,
hitch up her jeans and muscle into a bar,
order a boilermaker, slap her money down.
She strides into Local Color instead,
homes in on my wall of avian linocuts,
examines the bird at its center.
A grackle! she crows. Damn!
I tell her I was striving for iridescence.
Well, Honey, ya nailed it.
She likes my title, too.
Grackledom, she proclaims with relish.
Look how he’s struttin’ his stuff!
She mimics the bird’s footwork with her hands.
Turns out she knows her birds. IDs the waxwings.
Cedars, not Bohemians. Recognizes the flock
of Great Blue Herons. Climate change.
They’re comin’ north. White herons, too.
Herons, not egrets, she corrects her husband.
We’re flying high together on birds now.
She asks for my business card and I hand over
the Great Horned Owl that matches her tattoo.
Mine’s haloed in green, hers in purple.
Supposed to look like night, she says,
flexing her forearm.
Can’t see my way clear today, she says,
but I may be back for that grackle.
She swaggers out the door, cocky
like the bird on my wall.
I sneak a peek to see
if a couple of Harleys idle outside.
Leslie Moore
Window on Poetry
Belfast Free Library, 2022