Nathaniel Julien Brame

Wallcreeper Housefly Doorman

You are dreaming of
a red-winged wallcreeper
holding those feathered limbs
flexed and mothlike at its grey sides
there in the place
you used to live between hills
and in the dream
you call the bird by name.

You might be very old, still
or very uncertain: you might never see
a red-winged wallcreeper awake
or with turned head
the dusty hills of southern Oregon.
Still, uncertain, old
you can’t let your feet break down
or your eyes do all the running.

Downstairs from
the dream, flies stagger
themselves, arising
one by one to take their turn
beating at the glass.
You play housefly doorman:
the slim metal latch of the sliding door
goes up and down, up and down.

The bird dream waits
above the room of flies
for you to finish.
With a sliding glass door
it’s safer upstairs
in a dream, for a bird. 

You would rather play
wallcreeper doorman—
you’d stand there all day
sliding the glass door away
from their entering exiting bodies. 

You’ve read the footnotes
to the waxwing slain. You’ve held
a grey-cheeked thrush
so recently stilled, like a room
still emptying
of the sound of footsteps.

You found a bright room. You had a short dream.

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Nathaniel Julien Brame is a queer poet from the Great Lakes and lately the Pacific Northwest. His work has appeared in Main Squeeze, Ouch! Magazine, trampset, Blood and Thunder and The Pierian. Alongside poetry, his other preoccupations include cave paintings, choral music and jumping spiders. You can find him at nathanielbramepoetry.neocities.org.