Song Lynn Domina The body says: I am a fiesta. —Eduardo Galeano For Tandy Scheffler The body says, I am a galaxy. Choose sixteen or seven or ten stars and write your story within their image: dragon, swan, virgin. Your story will exceed the stars’ boundaries. The body says, I am not a bonfire or a conflagration or an inferno. I am not a crematorium. I am not a branding iron or an ember or the single candle flame illuminating a darkened room. I am the match waiting to be struck. The body says, I am the husk left after the harvest and I am the harvest. The body says, I am a fiesta. I am the clay bowl heaped with quartered limes, the salt rimming a margarita, the skewer offering thick slivers of ripe mango. You’ll wear your favorite yellow shirt embroidered with yellow flowers that blossom as you dance. The body says, I am a dream and in this dream you are folding paper birds. All day you fold swans and finches and starlings. When evening comes, your hands rest in lamplight. You hang turquoise owls from your ficus, and lavender doves you string past your window. Their fluttering soothes you, their soft efforts toward song. Lynn Domina is the author of two collections of poetry, Corporal Works and Framed in Silence,and the editor of a collection of essays, Poets on the Psalms. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, the Massachusetts Review, the Southern Review, and several other periodicals. She lives in the western Catskill region of New York. While taking much pride in her identity as a Luddite, she nevertheless admits that “Song” was inspired by a post on Facebook. “Song” appears in our Spring 2014 issue.