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Poem-a-day

What the Birds Do

Over the screech of the morning 
traffic of Eagle Rock Boulevard
I thought I heard the rooster 
from my parents’ backyard,
calling. They lived close enough,
it could have been. I’d been
awake for hours but was still 
in bed looking out the window
where a flock of red-crowned parrots
skated through the blue. 
The Echo Park Parrots. 
The Pasadena Parrots. The Silver-
lake Parrots. Everyone wants 
to own the birds, yet
here they were this morning,
serenading me. 
They come and go, they came
and went. In my dreams, I’m sometimes
a chicken. I fly from one man
to the next, hoping their arms
are strong like guava branches,
strong enough to roost 
in for the night, ripe with seeds. 
I’m malnourished in my dreams
because there are no trees, just birds
in nonstop flight and song.

Copyright © 2025 by Leonel Sánchez Lopez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 6, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.

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Leonel Sánchez Lopez

Leonel Sánchez Lopez
Photo credit: Neal Tayco
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Randall Mann is the Guest Editor of August. Read or listen to a Q&A with Mann about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
Insomniami Ariel Francisco 04/24/2021
My Father’s Accent Kaveh Akbar 04/23/2021
The Little Book of Cheerful Thoughts Jeffrey Harrison 04/22/2021
After Reading Kobayashi Issa’s The Spring of My Life On My 49th Birthday Dobby Gibson 04/21/2021
In her mostly white town, an hour from Rocky Mountain National Park, a black poet considers centuries of protests against racialized violence Camille T. Dungy 04/20/2021
Bobolink Didi Jackson 04/19/2021
Near the End of April William Stanley Braithwaite 04/18/2021
Venetian Siesta Joseph Millar 04/17/2021
I Never Wanted to Die Dorianne Laux 04/16/2021
Overlooking the Cortile David St. John 04/15/2021

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