Requiem for a Nest

By Wanda Coleman b. 1946 Wanda Coleman

the winged thang built her dream palace

amid the fine green eyes of a sheltering bough

she did not know it was urban turf

disguised as serenely delusionally rural

nor did she know the neighborhood was rife

with slant-mawed felines and those long-taloned

swoopers of prey. she was ignorant of the acidity & oil

that slowly polluted the earth, and was never

to detect the serpent coiled one strong limb below

following her nature she flitted and dove

for whatever blades twigs and mud

could be found under the humming blue

and created a hatchery for her spawn

not knowing all were doomed

Wanda Coleman, “Requiem for a Nest” from Ostinato Vamps. Copyright © 2003. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, www.pitt.edu/~press/. Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: Ostinato Vamps (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003)

Biography

Poet and writer Wanda Coleman is a blatantly humanist artist who has won much critical acclaim for her unusually prescient and often innovative work but who has struggled to make a living from her craft. In discussing “my life in poetry,” More magazine, April 2005, Camille Paglia said of Coleman: “She’s not as central as she should be. Her language jumps off the page.” With twelve books of collected writings published by the . . .

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