Heavy Lead Birdsong

Heavy Lead Birdsong

by Ryler Dustin
Heavy Lead Birdsong

Heavy Lead Birdsong

by Ryler Dustin

Paperback

$15.00 
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Overview

Ryler Dustin's Heavy Lead Birdsong is a collection of love poems—an old man plants orchards in his own chest, angels write messages encoded in boxcar graffiti, and a dangerous car ride through the dead of winter takes us to the Ice Age. Inspired by science and religion, grounded in subtle humor, these poems transcend modern political sorrows to celebrate the kind of human spirit that can save us.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780981521374
Publisher: Write Bloody Publishing
Publication date: 08/10/2010
Pages: 96
Product dimensions: 5.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Ryler Dustin was on his way to becoming a dental hygienist when something amazing happened: he overheard poetry at his local open mic. Within months his work had gained the attention of both slam and academic audiences—he gained a place on the prestigious Seattle Slam Team, won the Sue C Boynton Award and was invited to headline at the Richard Hugo House. Ryler also won the Bart Baxter Competition while bringing Seattle to the final stage of the Individual World Poetry Slam. He has no plans of pursuing dental hygiene in the future due to his devotion to poetry.

Read an Excerpt

My Old Man

When you're young, love rests awkward against your stomach,

wears a red hat, has your left lung tied to its wrist like a blue balloon

but my love wheezes like an old man when it sleeps...

I took away his typewriter because the keys kept me up all night

but now he scratches poems on the inside of my tongue.

I don't know how he gets up there...

He writes poems to big breasted women.

He writes poems to the bodies of women

and forgets to put the women in them...

My old man laughs like a grandmother with a shotgun

blowing my poems out of the sky—Not good enough! Not good enough!

He falls in love with buildings.

He falls in love with what people leave behind them:

new hairpins and old architecture and apple cores...

I type love poems to my father that say This poem is clearly-phrased

and technical. It is not over-concerned with aesthetics...

It's like a raft from a desert island

or a boy whose father beat him until he joined Vietnam.

It survives no matter what.

Hopelessness crosses this poem's mind but not its heart.

This poem hopes with all its crossed heart for life.

This poem drinks principles, Father.

This poem coughs on itself, Father.

This poem coughs on itself because it's trying to be bigger

than the man who birthed it, but it's just these slung-up words,

just these makeshift words slung up in the mouths of strangers

to prop them open and let the light out,

this poem is broken on your knee, Father,

take it up like a necklace, like a wire box,

like a birdcage, like something functional,

like a sniper rifle, like divorce counseling

and place it on your shelf between The Power of Now

and How to Forgive your Abusive Parent

or inside the cover of How to Forgive Your Alcoholic Father On His Deathbed

then Raise your Children the Way He Should Have, the way you did,

take it into your arms the way you did,

teach this poem to forgive itself so it will stop beating me up from the inside,

hold it softly in your hands like a brittle leaf,

like a sunset you could eat like an orange,

like the apples in our backyard,

like the trees in our backyard you used to prune for us every summer,

like every summer igniting into autumn

in our chests

in licks of red flame and copper wire

and piano notes I want to hang for you in the sky.

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