by Brian Baumgart
I track flight patterns of all the birds
without differentiating; they are not
the same, even if they catalogue
wings and memories like bellyfire,
so tell me all the lies about
your brother and mother and how
your hands rise high enough to
touch god because we all know the beaks
of birds pluck fingers from the air
and there is no winning in heaven, no
medals or trophies with names enscripted
in any language our mothers or brothers
recognize because the patterns have
broken, the catalogue set aflame
Note: The title of this series of poems comes from an auto-transcription of poet Jenny Yang Cropp saying, “My sonnets were terrible,” which transcribed to “My songs for terrorists.”
Brian Baumgart (he/him) is the author of Rules for Loving Right (Sweet, 2017), and his writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Big Muddy, Spillway, Whale Road Review, and South Dakota Review, among others, as well as in the anthology Rewilding: Poems for the Environment. Recent poems have been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He teaches writing at North Hennepin Community College, near Minneapolis, and has an MFA from Minnesota State University-Mankato. For more: https://briandbaumgart.wixsite.com/website
A-minor 