Free Bird Eating Bird by Kristin Naca

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    The generosity of so many enabled me to complete this collection. I owe the greatest debt to my family: Christian and Lisa, Michael, Rosalin, Puring, Ralph and Mary. And my family: Julianne McAdoo, Nikki Ono, Bill and Alejandro Sanchez, Roger Solis, Arturo Madrid and Antonia Castañeda, Omar Rodríguez and Verónica Prida, my Elena, Jim Clawson, Vicente Lozano, Carla Trujillo and Leslie Larson, Anel Flores, Chris Cuomo and Karen Schlanger, Erin Flanagan, Maxine Leckie, Derek Walker, Chris Byrne, Leah and Macauley Devun, Stacey Berry and Andre Jordan, Barbara Banfield, Kate Nelson, Padrino, Madrina, and the Macondistas.
    Thanks to many professors and writing teachers who responded to my work with generosity. Special thanks goes to my committee members at University of Pittsburgh and University of Nebraska. For their wisdom and unflinching belief, thank you, Sandra Cisneros and Hilda Raz.
    To my friends who wore down their fingernails against my drafts: Dina Rhoden, Nancy Krygowski, Heather Green, Mathias Svalina, Jehanne Dubrow, Lois Williams, Jan Beatty, Ellen Placey Wadey, Jeff Oaks, Chingbee Cruz, Renato Rosaldo, Diana Delgado, Marcia Ochoa, Nick Carbó, Eileen Tabios, Hadara Bar-Nadav, and Chuck Rybak. For all their timely advice: John Marshall and Christine Deavel of Open Books. Thank you, Joy, for your horses.
    Special thanks to María L. Lorenzo, at University of Nebraska, whose generous feedback and encouragement made my writing poems in Spanish possible. Thanks to Hedgebrook, and UN-L, for providing fellowships and time to write. Thanks to my colleagues at Macalester College. Thanks to painter Heather Hagle for her friendship and vision. And thanks to the National Poetry Series for the support of my work, Michael Signorelli at Harper Perennial for his enthusiasm, Yusef Komunyakaa, and everyone at MTV for giving me “My Shot with Yusef Komunyakaa.”
     
    These poems originally appeared in the following venues:
    5AM : “While Watching Dallas, My Auntie Grooms Me for Work at the Massage Parlor”
    THE ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN JOURNAL : “Grocery Shopping with my Girlfriend Who Is Not Asian”
    THE CINCINNATI REVIEW : “Heart Like a Clock”
    CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW : “Uses for Spanish in Pittsburgh”
    HARPUR PALATE : “Baptism,” “In the Time of the Caterpillars”
    INDIANA REVIEW: “Todavía no, ” “Not Yet”
    THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW: “What I Don’t Tell My Children about the Philippines”
    OCHO: THE MiPOesias PRINT JOURNAL COMPANION : “Speaking English Is Like,” “Glove,” “Adoration at El Montan”
    PINOY POETICS: A COLLECTION OF AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS ON FILIPINO AND FILIPINO AMERICAN POETICS : “Language Poetry / Grandma’s English”
    OCTOPUS : “House”
    PRAIRIE SCHOONER : “Ode to Glass,” “One Foot,” “ Las Meninas / The Maids of Honor,” “Rear Window,” “Witness”
    RIO GRANDE REVIEW: “Speaking Spanish Goes Like This”
    RIO GRANDE REVIEW ONLINE: “Catching Cardinals”

Her Spanish sounds like sunlight drying a wet shirt.
    And in the process, I’ve grown fond of her.
     
    She’s delicadeza, a word that names her nature.
    Whose dream deepens in the rain? Whose hair is lilacs?
    — Eugene Gloria

SPEAKING ENGLISH IS LIKE
    Brown and beige and blonde tiles set in panels of tile across the bathroom floor.
    Wakes curled into the pavement by traffic, the asphalt a slow, gray tide.
    A loose floorboard hiding the gouges chunked out of the floor.
    Tawny red curtains hamstrung in the quick, morning light.
    Her body oils like sage in a shirt, in the bed sheets.
    Pigeons on a line and in the gutters.
    The staple that misfires and jams the hammer.
    The tender, black wick at the top of a candle’s waxy lip.
    The lonely woman secretly dying her curtains red at the Laundry Factory.
    The purple and purple-blue berry sacks tethered to a blackberry rind.
    Branches lolled by the weight of voluminous, tender sacks.
    The path along the lake lit up with the