And I'm going to read just a couple of stories
from the new collection called Horse Flower Bird.
"A Cageling Tale."
Once upon a time, a girl of 17 or maybe 18 got a parakeet
and kept it in her room.
The girl's mother, with whom the girl lived alone,
didn't like this at all.
The mother thought birds, whether herons or doves,
peacocks or wrens, defined filth.
Bird hating was a strong, female tradition
in this family with a not very interesting history.
For example, when old aunt had lost her mind
and imagined birds everywhere, she'd yell, "Birds!
Birds!", and wave her arms around whenever anything,
a branch, someone's hand, even the wind,
got too near her body.
And the girl's grandmother had a vengeance for birds.
She had very bad vision.
And once, mistakenly, got a chair
upholstered in the fabric that depicted garish birds.
Strangely, the girl's mother, whose mother this was,
seemed to take some kind of wicked glee in the error
and never revealed it to her.
The girl was against phobias, both in general
and in the bird particular.
That's why she got a parakeet and caged it.
However, she pitied this sky bluebird for being confined.
It looked happy enough in its cage,
staring with unblinking eyes, licking its wings.
But could it really be happy in there?
Soon she took to letting the parakeet out of its cage
when the mother was out of the house.
The bird knew not to spoil the room
and only to soil the square of sandpaper that
perfectly lined its cage.
So the girl's mother never knew the bird often
flew willy nilly.
Furnished in pink, yellow, and green,
the bedroom complemented the bird's powdery blue.
Lying in bed, watching the pale bird toss itself
through the pastel scene, the girl
felt in the best way, pastoral, nearly.
The girl grew to love the parakeet so much
it was painful.
Sometimes she imagined roasting its sweet body,
putting the poor thing onto a stick over a fire.
It was so small and delicate, it was hard not to think this.
Previously, the girl hardly liked anything
at all that could breathe, let alone talk.
But thankfully, unlike human animals,
the parakeet could only say what she let it.
So far it could speak her name, Edith, its name, Pretty Eyes,
and one saying, "You're sexy."
Pretty Eyes was close to saying, "Hot lady" and "Nice rack."
This was to scandalize the mother, who
had phobias about words like sexy, lady, and rack.
The bird was a loyal friend.
Sometimes, though, Edith became quite tired of her,
though the gender of the bird was unknown.
Edith thought of it as her.
Edith was very moody, and many of her moods were not good.
And when in a bad mood, Edith could stand nothing to see her.
This presented a bit of a problem
with Pretty Eyes, who's smooth bald head,
despite those feathers, it was smooth as a tiny little ball.
It was all eyes.
"You're sexy," she said, making eye contact.
When Edith was sad, this comment crushed her.
But Edith quickly discovered a solution
to the trouble of juggling moods and the bird.
All she had to do was cover the birdcage
with a dark plastic shroud shaped perfectly to the cage
and make the bird think it was night.
Once covered, it shut up and slept.
So as the moods came often, Edith often covered the cage.
She felt no guilt about it at all, however.
Just as with her resistance to phobias,
Edith had something against guilt,
another devious maternal vice.
If Edith felt she owed Pretty Eyes something
for having to so passively bend to her well,
she began to allow Pretty Eyes free range
of her room at all times, even when the mother was home.
This meant the light blue creature got to flap
through the room at very late hours when it was dark outside
and the lights were on.
Then the windows reflected the room back into the room,
so the parakeet could not see the window pane that separated
the room from the world.
The pink flowered walls and yellow rug and green curtains
seemed to spread beyond where they did,
into a whole other room identical to this one.
There was thick glass and then dark woods
full of crows and mice and men who chased you home.
But Pretty Eyes was just a bird with a small parakeet brain.
She didn't know.
So after not very much time had passed
since Edith began letting her out of the cage
when the outdoors had blackened, Pretty Eyes
flew into the window and died.
With horror, Edith quietly placed her back in the cage.
The next morning, she began to fake weep
when her mother entered the room.
"Wake up, piglet.
Another day in which to excel."
To Edith's dismay, she soon found herself
in actual mourning, pointing wordlessly
sobbing at the dead bird.
Her mother just stared and then said with a frown,
as if she'd rehearsed, "You may eat like a bird,
but you never fed this bird what birds ought to eat.
No wonder it's dead.
You'll probably be dead soon.
I don't miss the bird and I refuse to miss you."
Edith either misinterpreted this last phrase or not,
and assumed her mother meant she wished she had never been born.
It took little hesitation for Edith to leave.
She packed a bag, buried the bird, got on a bus,
and moved on.
Flew the coop, as it were.
So it was in diffident anonymity that Edith
began to work as a topless dancer in a city far away.
Where suspended from a red room ceiling in a cage,
she swung on a bench and tilted so
that her long hair spilled on her back
and flew out of the cage in wisps.
All the girls had roles they played,
and Edith's advertised as The Cageling.
In her role, she didn't do much except stand around in the cage
or swing or sometimes crouch in a bird-like manner
at the edge of the cage, and kind of lean against the metal
rods of the cage looking sad.
Between acts, she'd sip a beverage at the bar.
In her pale blue bathrobe with its wide gauzy sleeves
and with her small eyes, she looked rather
like her poor, dead bird.
This job suited Edith well.
It was easy, the men were nice, and she
didn't have to talk to anyone while she performed.
"I can be any kind of bird I want in the cage, right?",
she'd ask the manager upon being hired.
"I don't have to be a talking bird.", to which he
agreed with a scornful laugh.
"My girls don't talk.", he said in exactly the nasal drawl
one expects such a man to use.
So it didn't matter if she was in one of her moods
at this job.
Bitterness, sadness, unpleasantness, horror,
they were all the same to a girl in a cage,
standing around, with a bird's blank stare in her eyes,
feeling nothing but air on her bones.
Eventually, of course, Edith got too old for the job.
The place preferred its girls young, in addition to quiet.
And when she turned 30, they let her go.
But like other girls who worked there,
Edith had made the acquaintance to some of the men at the club.
And together, they pooled some dough kept her up rather well.
This was common.
Some girls wanted swimming pools,
some wanted diamonds and leather and pearls.
Not Edith, she wanted a modest allowance.
Enough for food, electricity, and the movies.
She didn't care for a phone, not wanting her mother ever
to find her.
Grateful, Edith was kind to her men.
Not prone to speaking, how could she fail to please them?
Eventually, she was able to afford a two bedroom apartment.
One bedroom was for sleeping and the friendships that paid.
The other she kept closed to the men.
Inside that room, she began to build a cage for herself,
the cage of her dreams.
It was made of metal she found in [INAUDIBLE] scraps
of automobiles, machinery, saws.
She'd stand in the room for hours
at a time welding that cage into perfect submission with tools
she'd received as gifts from her men.
Blow blowtorches, vises, and saws.
Curiously, her gentle friends never
asked why she'd want them.
Finally, after many months of work, Edith has finished.
The cage has round steel edges that
nearly touch the sides of the room in which it's contained.
And when you open the door and look in,
you can see through the bars and windows to outside,
where spreads a thick, brick wall.
This cage is very helpful to Edith.
Though her life is nice enough, what
with her income and her lack of phobias and guilt,
those moods still come and go despite her sweet men,
despite how well things have worked out
when you really look at them.
But if she didn't know better, Edith
would start talking aloud, staring too much
toward the brick wall outside.
For now, Edith simply enters the cage, closes the door,
and sits down.
Not moving, she feels calm.
And when you really think about it, what makes that so wrong?