Angel T. Dionne, "Bird Ornaments"

 

Angel T. Dionne is an Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Moncton Edmundston campus. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Pretoria and is the founding editor of Vroom Lit Magazine. She is the author of a full-length collection of short fiction, Sardines (ClarionLit, 2023), and two chapbooks, Inanimate Objects (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and Mormyridae (LJMcD Communications, 2024). She is also the co-editor of Rape Culture 101: Programming Change (Demeter Press, 2020). Her full-length poetry collection, Bird Ornaments, is forthcoming with Broken Tribe Press in early 2025.

About Bird Ornaments, by Angel T. Dionne
Bird Ornaments is a seventy-five-page collection of short surrealist poems focusing on the irrational juxtaposition of unrelated elements. In these poems, words and images eschew rationality and coherence, allowing thoughts to move freely without censorship. Bird Ornaments uncovers the true function of thought and unearths the marvellous, which is often obscured by the rational mind. As André Breton said, surrealism is the "undirected play of thought," and that’s what Bird Ornaments captures.

In "Grandmother’s Geraniums," flowers bloom from a rocking chair, from an egg, and from a toe infected with gout. "City Living" paints an unsettling portrait of urbanity with its tethered birds and hopeless beggars, while "Bastard Equations" examines the sum of a mother’s regrets. All in all, Bird Ornaments is a haunting look at what it means to be human.

The publisher's website is here. Below, you can read two poems from the collection. 

From Bird Ornaments

Broken Silk

Which way did my neck bend 
           before it broke?
Did it grow crooked 
           with the weight of my silk?
Did it spin hot and gurgling 
          down my spine? 

I suck plump aphids
          from the audience’s crescendo.
In the open space, I evaporate,
          hanging there like a mosaic.

 
Borges Story

The roof leaks abandoned suspicions, 
and torn wood fragments
are lodged in the sunrise, 
paralyzing tomorrow’s breath.

 
My feet disintegrate 
into the daggered floors,
a signal 
for the jaded. 

A bear’s den of question marks 
and explanations 
is scrawled 
on the soles of my feet.

My legs have always been a Borges story – 
a garden of forking paths,
a book of sand, 
a library of babble,
burbling commitments.