Lia Purpura, Parasol Mushroom (detail), featured in AGNI 102
Lingua
I regret my accent, which is occasionally good enough
for taxi drivers to want to take me beyond my destination.
It’s the way callejon rolls off my tongue like a dirty word.
I can’t help it, anymore than I can help buying the coffin maker’s
last two beeswax candles because I love their slow, holy burn.
I regret that my husband has taken up birding and flags
down the blue-throated Mexican Hummingbird
who flies backwards in his honor, then lays two small, white eggs.
I can’t help it he’s become the rooftop curator
of El Museo de las Aves de Mexico, cataloguing without effort the Azur-rumped Tanager, the Indigo Bunting, but most often the Common Inca Dove.
I regret not having done more work of my own in this area,
but while my naming is faulty, nightly
I yank strands of my hair for their nests.
Victoria Anderson
Victoria Anderson is assistant professor of writing at Loyola University in Chicago. Her book, This Country or That, was published in 2001 by Mid-America Press. She has poems forthcoming in Greensboro Review, Poet Lore, and ACM. She lives and works in Evanston, Illinois. (updated 2/2005)