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.
