Siren

The song came from the rock, and the singer had wings. A siren, the Greek bird woman, human face, feathers, a voice that took the oars out of the hands. No fish tail. No green shelf. People who heard it rowed worse afterward, a siren gift already in the ear. It finds them again in siren playing cards that hum when the room is quiet, in a siren notebook whose margin fills with the same line, in a siren postcard of the wing and the open mouth. The rock goes silent. The song does not.