Three Poems by Meredith Trede
By Meredith Trede
Surviving Birds
As you pack, you tell me
the swans attacked
during your dawn river swim.
Their fierce wings beat
a hiss of chase. You say swans
protect their space. I say
they don’t want men
near their young.
What do these swans know?
And what chance
did Leda have?
Those wings and
the shoddiness of a god,
disguised as a bird
who mates for life.
To Have and Have Not
Here’s looking at you, kid.
Men said things like that.
You know how to whistle, don’t you?
Just put your lips together and blow.
We know a woman said that,
At least in the movies. The camera
Was there. But she didn’t write
The lines; they were scripted for her.
She’s just a kid.
He’s been around.
See the rakish angle of his fedora.
How his cigarette dangles.
She keeps talking
And thinks he’s saying something.
Joan’s Voices
The old religion seems so far: women pass
. the burning site costumed like men; old gods
. are named devil or naught.
. Water of aconite,
. hemlock and soot mix a flying ointment.
Their new god wants sacrifice of soul
. not flesh, presumes to sky and abandons
. the soil.
. Heed the voices. Call them
. satan, saint, god. They will live.
That she knew herself divine, forgotten.
. As though a flow of water could wash
. away her song:
. That I may burn.
. That I may burn.
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Meredith Trede’s full-length book of poems, Field Theory, was published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2011. A founder of Toadlily Press, her chapbook, Out of the Book, was in Desire Path, the inaugural volume of The Quartet Series and she serves on the Advisory Board of Slapering Hol Press. Journals that have published my work include Barrow Street, Gargoyle, 13th Moon, and The Paris Review. She has held residency fellowships at Blue Mountain Center, Ragdale, Saltonstall, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Virginia and France, and was awarded the 2012 Nicholson Political Poetry Award.
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