Hugh Behm-Steinberg
On Crows (Again)
Not the crows which hang out, which hang out displacing hawks. Not the seven crows interspersed among the budding branches of our sycamore tree, their mistakable gliding, their caw sounds, their mimicries. Not building houses but watching them; not watching them but what happens to them, what happens they watch. Remembering it never happened not once, they trick each other, they’re not playing around they’re so playful. Not electrical: perch on top of powerlines; not shy, ruffling. Not imagining, so not crows, little movies in our heads going back and forth. The interstices are black because they’re crow feathers; the crows put them there just in case you’re not coming back.
Thought
A bee is a thought. My thoughts are bees. You hive me, honey me. A bee is a letter. A bee is a letter. A bee is a drone sound. I like drone sounds. The first time is labor and that’s exposition; the second is music and that alleviates suffering. Let me help. Beeswax models, cities in wax, six sided grids, stacked into towers, in the crook of a tree, in the shade of a tree, in a box, in boxes, humming and humming and humming. I am tended, you tend me. I am stubborn, I have tendencies. I am intended, I want what I want. One thought is never alone, all my thoughts are alone. Jumping up and down, the music’s that good. I have a head full of bees.
Every Part of You
Like gestation, different natures, immensities, making you, letting you and making you. Therefore breath is a cage, and language perches within it, language trembles when you speak. You’re not just talking to yourself. Can’t help it. Breath after breath. A secret you are to yourself. A very slow wave, which is also breathing, in the ground, you need instruments to translate its passages into music, music that opens up like opera and swallows everything. Is a wave, also that way. You are one person. You become two people. Only is a mountain, only is a bone, only is dark green, only is red: a lover who devours you, all of you, every part of you.
Hugh Behm-Steinberg is the author of Shy Green Fields (No Tell Books) and the forthcoming The Opposite of Work (JackLeg Press). He teaches writing at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where he edits the journal Eleven Eleven.
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