The Agreement
I swing from a brass chain
on the cracked tin ceiling,
back and forth to the fitful beat
of tittering wind chimes.
It is a fancy cage, the cage I agreed on.
I put these walls around me, gilded bar by bar.
Their hummingbird in the verdigris cage,
admiring the poison—
green copper and zinc,
but I never dare to chew.
The benevolent hands
of clucking parents
and the cooing blue-blazered spouse
tap to say hello,
admire my violet and green plumes.
They change my water,
set out a bowl of food.
I regard them coldly,
tiny bird breaths, heartbeats,
and gossamer wings pulsing
at frenetic speed.
The thin beak tastes, then recoils.
At bedtime they throw
a quilted pink shroud over my world,
to snuff me unconscious.
I bang against the bars,
warbling arias, chanting poems,
entertaining an audience of one.
Small florid birds disappoint you.
About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).
Image Credit: József Rippl-Rónai “Woman with a Birdcage” (1892) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
As It Ought To Be 