A Convergence Of Birds Read Online Free PDF Page B

snapshot-images of the Blond Child are secreted in the Box’s dark corners and beneath a heart-shaped rock covered in dried dirt that I brought back from beside the mesh-wire fence. A vividly yellow bird, canary or goldfinch, purchased from the taxidermist from whom I purchase all my creature-artifacts, is placed on top of this rock, tiny talon-claws secured by glue to the rock. With tweezers I have managed to lift the little bird’s wings from its body so that it appears about to fly away; its pert little tail feathers are at an upward angle that, too, suggests imminent flight; but never, never will the little yellow bird fly out of my Box, as the Blond Child will never fly out of my Box.
    Of your fleeting and unloved life I make you immortal.
    Of your broken heart, I make art.
    Out of that lost day have I plucked you, and myself
    Yet, you are alone in the Box. I, doomed to invisibility, am forbidden to take my place beside you.
    Joseph Cornell
    GRAND HOTEL DES ILES D’ OR
    1952
    10.75 x 6 x 3 in.
    box construction

SHOWING AN EPISODE
    Diane Williams
    Oh well, my life—or so I must have one—is very crackalured and thin-shelled, encrusted with gold and carved walnut on a moonlit evening, in the warm light, as if in a lukewarm fire, where no actual cruelty occurs. When I say which night, or the year this is, or the name of my mother, I have more sympathy for her.
    The strand of havoc-rendering beads Mr. Wang gave to her hangs around her neck for what good that will do her.
    She is well-known and she lives in New York City. It is well-known she is meant to be kept safe. She bestows blessings and she will come easily to the lips. In my life, she smiles.
    I train myself to forget all that. I used to be so worried. I think I have not been good enough yet. You know the men I like won’t fuck me.
    I am now officially rippling, some of the time optimistically, for I am a trained girl.
    I forget to care about my leg, though.
    “You go in there. Go in there.” I go in there. “In you go again. Do you have to sit in the—what is the opposite of sun?” the mother says.
    “Shade,” I say.
    “Shade,” she says. “If you want to sit in the shade, there are lots of places to sit. Do you like it? You don’t like it. It looks as if you don’t like it.”
    “I like it. What would we do?” I ask her.
    “We will play and we will work.”
    “Will we fight?”
    “Not very much.”
    “You know so much,” I say, so next week I will do that. No, I won’t. This is a very busy time for me. Perhaps after the new year. I kiss her lips.
    What I have done is fabulous. I seem to be getting a little emotional. I keep pointing upstairs. I point upstairs again. I don’t know if I will ever give a little chuckle. I plead in the corner. I was quite favored about a mile away from India. I asked Edward if he wanted more than anything not to be unkind to me, that was how coldly and calmly I was determined to be passionate.
    Joseph Cornell
    UNTITLED {OWL WITH MOON}
    c. 1945
    22.875 x 12.875 x 5.6875 in.
    mixed media box construction

THE CURSIVE EXAMPLE
    Howard Norman
    SINCE I COULDN’T SLEEP, I toured the farmhouse. There was little new in this. Tea would’ve been better, but I percolated coffee, then drank a cup, an accompaniment to being awake, not the cause. The night would be less wretched because I’d learned to consider insomnia an expertise. The farmhouse was built in 1847. I got up from bed; out the second-floor window there was a startlingly moonlit field. “Flooded.” The crabapple tree could be seen almost in its entirety. My wife was asleep. My daughter was asleep in her bedroom, with its view of the barn awash in moonlight. I was wearing boxer shorts and a black T-shirt. It was a balmy summer night, 3:00 a.m. I had never kept a Journal of Insomnia. In this situation, my friend, DM, would have brewed tea. I felt like meeting DM in The Village Restaurant in Hardwick, but at this hour I couldn’t by all etiquette telephone,