Fissured Tongue Series

Look At a Bird
for Layli Long Soldier
by Tim Carrier
​Fissured Tongue Series Vol VI  |  May 2025​

"Untitled (Bird)" by Michael Thompson. Mono-print, 18 x 12 inches, 2018

Look At a Bird 

We like to sit on the patio, on Dunlap Street,
& talk about time, & love.

The dogs come in & out of the house. They walk around as love.

You are my friend.

You are my friend who.

You are my friend who says, Look at a mountain. Look at a bird— in new poems.

The L of your name was once a lion. Then a mouth. A raised arm. Then a staff.

Its shape imparting direction to the animals
& the land.

Its sound is soft & rounded. Lambda. Lamedh. Lull.

Its numerical value is 30, whose figures add up to 3. You. Me. A bird.

​You & I, a bird. Look at our truest selves, hovering over our heads— 

on the patio. The long light at the end of a “day”.

You might be one of the 36 special people who sustain the world. Or I might be. Or we might be.
The hidden people for whom god preserves the world despite all the wrong actions of the rest.

You might be a bird.
Look at a bird. Its loving shadow.

And look at my shadow
as I’m walking from the patio to my car:

Our smoke still all around me.

Almost tipping over from the energy we’ve created.

My shadow stretched before me on the pavement & the gravel.

This is the longest my shadow has ever been.

I can’t believe we are “here” together.

Let’s stay under the sky a long time.

—for Layli Long Soldier

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About the Author 
Tim Carrier is from St. Louis. His poems have appeared in journals including Cordite Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Foglifter, The Offing, Poetry Northwest, and West Branch. His chapbook Lookout Mountain is forthcoming from The Song Cave in summer 2025. He lives in Tewa territory, in so-called New Mexico.

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About the Work
Sometimes after an experience, a poem comes very fast. Sometimes this happens after spending time with someone I love. My friend Layli and I are famous (among ourselves lol) for being able to gab and blab for hours on end. One early evening after one of our visits, I started writing this poem even before I got to my car. I’m so grateful for a poet friend like Layli, and for her work. But I am especially grateful that for the last year and a half she has been one of my closest and most steadfast companions in bearing witness to the U.S. / Israeli genocide in Gaza. In my understanding, there is no issue or crisis or concern of graver consequence to so-called humanity or the planet. 
​
​Palestine must be free, or none of us will ever be free. 

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About the Artist
Michael Thompson is a Chicago-based artist working in a variety of mediums including print-making, collage, kites, kinetic sculpture, memory jugs and fake postage stamps among them.

​"The collage is inspired and informed through the isolation of the pandemic, they are a rather random assembly." www.michaelthompsonart.com

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