Signal

The signal
that you’re done

in the early morning
cuckoo             I am a
           kinder regime than I ever dreamed
softer

tiny fibers in the sewn day
ply me
across lifelines
the child’s

hug that collapses
the run             breathless other
better part of me

blood motes
transverse everything
god heart
animal mind

sometimes I don’t know I’m bleeding
other times I just think so
like the bird always hearing its wingbeat

 
 
 

Julie Choffel is the author of The Hello Delay (Fordham University Press, 2012) and a graduate of the MFA Program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her poems have appeared in Coconut, make/shift, Denver Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, and other places. She can usually be found in Connecticut, where she teaches creative writing and lives with her husband, daughter, and twin sons.