Decoy

The waterfowl are insatiable here. Lucky me. I wait
behind an eyelet curtain and watch my precious spread
stutter. The motion I add, through these holes, makes the view
dance like a real animal. The living lake. The well-placed
feeders. The colors and their endlessly
spinning wings. And like a real animal I tighten
at each dulled flicker. With this expertise it’s hard to tell
if anything is ever passing by, but the bullet, flying
blindly, will make its perfect arc. When those insatiable birds
come—and they could come all at once—perhaps
they already came—yesterday, now—there is no knowing—truthfully,
I have never held a gun, but I like when poems lie.
Would you believe it if I said I treasured crouching and watching
this duck’s shiny, polished head?

Reckless

It was reckless to look at the moon too long
after reading all those moon poems
about what a moon can be.
Just like it was reckless to think of you
the way I am thinking of you now. Sideways
and puffed out, like the birds with the red
ballooning from their chests. You look so lovely,
darling, and that is reckless, too. Not because you mean it,
but because your likeness gets the best of you. The same way
on some nights, the moon hangs recklessly
in the sky, looking so moonlike
we could be feeding her all her lines. When I wanted you,
nothing could compare to you, because you
were the next closest thing. What I'm doing here
is reckless. Don't you see? Away with my giant,
pulsing organ. Away with my pantomimed
song. Do you want to know what happened
after I left? I'll tell you.
I wandered around the city all day
collecting everything I saw. An early barfight;
two children jumping rope; a ray of light
on a tall, orange crane. I took these
home with me, and with them,
I did nothing.

Marie Ungar is a writer from Charlottesville, Virginia. Her work appears in Four Way Review, Lake Affect, ASAP/J, and elsewhere. She has served as the poetry editor of The Harvard Advocate. She’s currently a Master's candidate in contemporary literature at Oxford, where she edits nonfiction and poetry for The Oxonian Review. You can find her at marieungar.com or follow her on Twitter @mreeeungr.