To Marianne Moore: “A Parrot for Juan Gris”

--In the voice of Joseph Cornell

Which way to the bird's call
to the song inside a pane,
a painted box wearing a coat

of eight layers left to age
in the rain and sun of May?
You say urchins are the sea’s

way of wearing spiked heels.
A white cockatoo is perched
with his favorite things: a metal

ring, a piece of string. The bird
reads French newsprint dated
November, 1946. How should I

show the limits of lines once I
abdicate paint, the verse of this
bird? When will he be finished

with me? Out of my dreams?
I’m ready instead for real owls
to hoot and holler. To shoo me.

To who me. Who you? You will
find your way in leather-bound
pages, you will find a way to name

this: mercy, night skies, the palette
of birds busying themselves with time
like color on their wings. The way

the moon sends salutations on evenings
like these when the path of stars is sure
to lead somewhere.

*Nicole Foreman is an MFA candidate and a Thesis Fellow at George Mason University. She is a graduate of the North Carolina School of Science & Math and Davidson College. Her work has been featured in Iodine, Sin City Poetry Review, Yalobusha Review, and Red Rock Review. She is currently at work on an ekphrastic thesis, which takes its cues from artists such as Joseph Cornell, Doris Salcedo, and Monica Cook.