Butcher-Bird

Angelo Rego

with a line from Bai Juyi, translated by Zixi Cai

My body like gentle birds you impale
           makes for a feeble meal, your appetite
    something monstrous         and mine simply hopeless
        and unmasculine this is what makes us
      pariah among       lovers. I once knew
                     other men             who would envy our soaked fruit
I wonder: when serpent constricts   serpent
                  songbird void; is it mating? dueling?
 whose wretched heart beats faster? which inspires
    Love, the moment that our flesh becomes meat
             on our wedding bed         purged of sin? beckon
      make us bleed             deluged metamorphoses,
      become dragons       myriad-mouthed deltas,
                        who are               reborn birds, our wings adjoining.

Angelo Rego (he/him) is a writer and MFA student at Florida International University. Outside of writing, he loves Nerds (the mascot, not the candy itself) and observing alligators in the Everglades.