I WAS BORN
by Steve Klepetar
an exile, in an inner room.
My father the king declared me lost,
my mother the queen bolted the door.
Over the ocean I wailed my song.
Air swelled with butterflies
and bees searching for a flower’s nest.
It was easy to be alone, easy to breathe
in that iron boat. How long I waited
for fragrant night and moon-shaped
balloon. In the stars I made out serpentine
patterns of my life, its uneasy contours
and all the ways my words seemed out
of place, the American way I said “dynasty”
and “taste,” how trees bent sadly as I
wandered by, distracted by mist and hair
and glass. In my mouth, I tasted marbles
and stones, the language of another
land. Its weather nearly made me blind.
In the rain I talked about crows, who knew
my sorrow in the depths of black coats, and
drummed rhythm in the tender bark of pines.
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