A New Romantic

There’s nothing more natural than brown arms,
nestling next to loved flesh, stilly and stuck,
and the notes of that Northern Cardinal,
acute, intense, subverting slow gentle
sounds with repeated chirrups. I can’t see
all but silhouettes and the bird’s sunny
souvenirs of sweet nature. I think this
red thing has wedded us—we owe more to
shrill, happy singing. Rare love, to
me, lives in a shrub, beating where I once
hurt myself; is not as red as blood, but
pomegranate; is perhaps not even
human; may be heard in enduring birds.

Prince Bush is a poet in Nashville, TN. He has poetry in *82 Review, Cotton Xenomorph, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Protean Magazine and SOFTBLOW, and has prose about poetry in The Tennesseean. He is expecting a BA in English by 2020 from Fisk University, and an MFA in Poetry soon after.