I will appreciate disconnected bits of form:
Leaves closing prayerfully,
     wings
         a duck wading.
A swarm of birds revising its character,
      like a flame.

Origami

The back of our daily parts
is raw hide.
I don't like public spaces.
Colors squirrel into the glass,
the shape of.

Everyone lined up
to get a seat on the mammoth bird.
People flew on its wings,
which were orange crushed-velvet.
They folded, unfolded, and refolded.

Shira Dentz is a poet and fiction writer living in Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry has appeared and is forthcoming in numerous journals & anthologies including: 13th Moon, Salt Hill Journal, Phoebe, Cimarron Review, The Evergreen Chronicles, Barrow Street, and Escaping the Yellow Wallpaper. She has had a story selected as a semi-finalist in the Nelson Algren competition, and as a finalist for the Heekin Foundation's fiction fellowship. In '98 & '99 she was a semi-finalist in the The Nation/"Discovery" contest.

 Shira

 Dentz