Tyler Mills - Hawk Parable

In Hawk Parable, by Tyler Mills, the intricacies of what is seen and what is felt are scars in the body of a bomb survivor or even legacies of guilt. Exposure in the white-hot flashpoints of the atomic age are lessons applicable to now and urgently call us to take heed and notice that The shadow is an airplane and that Vapor is a value. The story of the hunter flying high above the earth is a lesson, also, about the prey and how the exchange between seeing and seen can spell unimaginable horror. The poet traverses the terrain of familial taboo, peering into the past and interrogating what is reflected there in beautiful and painful lyricism. Oliver de la Paz, judge 2017 Akron Poetry PrizeAKRON SERIES IN POETRYMary Biddinger, Editor Tyler Mills, Hawk Parable Caryl Pagel, Twice Told Emily Rosko, Weather Inventions Emilia Phillips, Empty Clip Anne Barngrover, Brazen Creature Matthew Guenette, Vasectomania Sandra Simonds, Further Problems with Pleasure Leslie Harrison, The Book of Endings Emilia Phillips, Groundspeed Philip Metres, Pictures at an Exhibition: A Petersburg Album Jennifer Moore, The Veronica Maneuver Brittany Cavallaro, Girl-King Oliver de la Paz, Post Subject: A Fable John Repp, Fat Jersey Blues Emilia Phillips, Signaletics Seth Abramson, Thievery Steve Kistulentz, Little Black Daydream Jason Bredle, Carnival Emily Rosko, Prop Rockery Alison Pelegrin, Hurricane Party Matthew Guenette, American Busboy Joshua Harmon, Le Spleen de Poughkeepsie Titles published since 2010.

Hawk

Parable

Tyler Mills Copyright 2019 by The University of Akron Press All rights reserved First Edition 2019 Manufactured in the United States of America.

Hawk

Parable

Tyler Mills Copyright 2019 by The University of Akron Press All rights reserved First Edition 2019 Manufactured in the United States of America.

All inquiries and permission requests should be addressed to the publisher, The University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio 44325-1703. ISBN: 978-1-629221-05-2 (paper)
ISBN: 978-1-629221-06-9 (ePDF)
ISBN: 978-1-629221-07-6 (ePub) A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSl/NISO z39.481992 (Permanence of Paper). Cover image: Birding, Chris Maynard 2017. Used with permission. Hawk Parable was designed and typeset in Mrs. Hawk Parable was designed and typeset in Mrs.

Eaves with Futura display by Amy Freels and printed on sixty-pound natural and bound by Bookmasters of Ashland, Ohio.

Contents

A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light
Gertrude Stein

One morning, a woman had been building shelves for her garage. One of the carpenters helping her brought her a hawk, the feathers glossy as they spread open over her shirt. She noticed the nape: birch-bark white, brown grains in it. This story isnt from a book, though A Forgotten Past is tempting.	It hadnt rained in so long the air smelled like crumpled paper.
From a distance, a hawk looks like an eagle. An eagle shows its eye on the back of a dollar bill. She noticed dove feathersengraving	The vending machine eats them.
grayfrom the things that refused to leave her garden. She Googled hawk eating dove:	Someone made the video by holding her hands very still.
the eye reflects nothing, and sticky feathers cling to the hawks beak as it hammers at the puffed breast. She watched the video until the dove started breathing	An eye gone black.
the way you might, running down a dirt path, the sun burning shadows out of the ground. The carpenter set the hawk down on the concrete floor,	Make it mean something.
turned away. The woman switched on a band saw. She pulled a 2x4 through the blade. The hawk had been stunned by a car and woke back to itself	The woman wanted to paint it.
a spirit that hunts the ground. She hoped it would live. She went inside for her camera.	Make it mean.

You look like a monster, one woman said to another.

Make it mean.

You look like a monster, one woman said to another.

The woman was on fire. This is the first of two screws twisted into a wall. One bus is sent on its route minutes before the other. This is the first. Thousands of soldiers were lowering their faces to the grass, as though an exercise can will an effect. People made their way to the hospital: a doctor would look at them, and then they could die.

You can dip a line of monofilament into a river. You can do it twice. The first becomes a second. The second becomes a third. Three girls stretched out their arms while the wind sheared their flesh. Sheared, not seared, what was left.

I could have shown you a swimming pool lit with turquoise light. It was early. It was a mission. It wasnt the first.

Here we have another moment of blue-sky thinking, when no one loves you in the morning. The tinderbox as empty as a train at 5 a.m.

It is 5 a.m.: a tin knife and fork packed in your pants, you yank the sheets up where your neck placed an envelope of nerves. Acrid sky over us, streaked with the tar blur of gasoline: the sky knows the machines are being fedthat is blue-sky thinking, when no one loves you less. I want to touch the raw cloth of your coat sleeve while you put your body inside it: its like Im the voice from the beginning of an opera that speaks from the ceiling gilded with octagonal tiles to say, there are exitson all sides. But you are moving like a wheel riding over a rope, and your lover is your hand, lacing up boots through their rusted portals. The sky reminds me of nothing, the way it feels staring into white curls of light combed through stones. What I thought was a tinderbox is actually a box of bullets.

For a moment, soldiers dont cross the path.

For a moment, soldiers dont cross the path.

My eye inspects it: three tents cluster the background. Morning. Island light: glare of water, of all surface. My eye chooses three overcoats hanging loose from a wire: white shouldered as though inside out. Top buttons open into empty necks. The wind attracts one, turns a sleeve slightly.