My Parrot Has Died

By MIGUEL-ANGEL ZAPATA

 

My parrot has died in a clinic in Huntington. His life was a miracle
He was the envy of all the birds in the neighborhood. For five
years he sang a piece by Boccherini and knew a couple Mexican
pop songs by heart. When he got excited he whistled at the girls who
passed by my house.

When he was happy, the house was a joy. His harmonious whistling
infected with happiness the jealous parakeets in the other cage. Better I’d
been a canary, he would tell me: death is a lullaby beneath
a tremendous poplar that protects us. The poplar likes its family, and lets
fall its leaves like bloody money
. It is an enormous sky from
where they can see the waterfalls, the wings of the birds that return to see
water at the source.

Today I’m sad. My parrot was a piece of heaven in a world of fear.
Translated by Loren Goodman

 

Miguel-Angel Zapata books include Lumbre de la letra, Escribir bajo el polvo, El cielo que me escribe, Cuervos, Los muslos sobre la grama, the bilingual A Sparrow in the House of Seven Patios, and Fragmentos de una manzana y otros poemas.

Loren Goodman is the author of Famous Americans, Suppository Writing, and New Products.

Click here to purchase Issue 03

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

My Parrot Has Died

Related Posts

Cover of All Is The Telling by Rosa Castellano

An Embodied Sense of Time: Raychelle Heath Interviews Rosa Castellano

ROSA CASTELLANO
I’m holding a blank page all the time for myself. That’s a truth that I choose to believe in: the blank page is a tool for our collective liberation. It can be how we keep going. I love that we can find each other on the page and heal each other, too. So, I invoke that again and again, for myself, because I need it.

The Swan

MARZIA GRILLO
Luigi goggled his eyes and shook his arms, the veins at his neck straining, all to spit a gold nugget on her sun-polished thigh: ‘It was at the floor of the lake,’ he said, proffering her the same ring as always. And from above his bent knee was visible with little effort, aided by the currents of destiny.

Cloudy sunset over field.

Florida Poems

EDWARD SAMBRANO III
I will die in Portland on an overcast day, / The Willamette River mirroring clouds’ / Bleak forecast and strangers not forgetting— / Not this time—designer raincoats in their closets. / They will leave for work barely in time / To catch their railcars. It will happen / On a day like today.