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Mockingbird

By Hailey Leithauser

No other song
                    or swoop (part
       quiver, part swivel and
             plash) with
  tour de force
stray the course note
       liquefactions
   (its new,
bawdy air an
       aria hangs in) en-
thralls,
             trills, loops, soars,
                    startles, out-warbles,
out-brawns, more
       juicily,
                    lifts up
the dawn, outlaws from
                        sackcloth, the cool
     sloth of bed sheets,
                             from pillows
           and silks
                and blue-quilted, feminine
bolsters, fusses
                      of coverlets;
                                   nips as the switch
of a juvenile willow, fuzz
               of a nettle, to
       window and window
                           and window and ever
                   toward egress, to
           flurry, pollen
and petal shed,
                            to wet street
  and wet pavement,
              all sentiment intemperate,
  all sentience
                         ephemeral.

Poet Bio

Black and white headshot of poet Hailey Leithauser in front of a painting.

Hailey Leithauser originally took poetry workshops as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, but stopped writing for almost 20 years while she pursued a career as a librarian. Standing in front of a van Gogh painting during a visit to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., she was inspired to return to writing, and eventually developed her own form, the small sonnet. Writing dense, compact poems packed with slant and full rhymes has taught Leithauser “to really exploit what you can do in a poem that is only 70 syllables long and that relies on rhyme to really carry it through," she told the Takoma Voice in an interview. Born in Florida, Leithauser lives in Takoma Park, Maryland.

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