Hummingbird
—For Amerasians who are still looking for their fathers.
Born on a bed of lichen,
moss, and spiderweb,
my grandmother tied
him to a chair,
to control the shadow
in the corner of her eye,
the lira slipping
through her fingers.
They called him For-chill,
after via Forcella,
where an iridescent gorget
wouldn’t save your throat.
His heart raced through
the ultraviolet spectrum of life,
a tiny Superman- my father –
I needed to know more.
MyHeritage told me
while at war in Vietnam,
his wings hummed
back and forth,
crashing all the colorful parties,
dipping his tongue
into pretty nectar
with napalm
under his scalelike feathers.
He left behind hatchlings
with closed eyes,
my half-brothers,
born of the same father,
a hummingbird triggered
by a brain on a migration route
that no one understood,
until now.
Nancy Byrne Iannucci teaches history at Emma Willard School. Her poems have been published in dozens of magazines and journals, some include, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Typehouse Literary Magazine, and Gargoyle. She has two chapbooks, Temptation of Wood (Nixes Mate Review, 2018) and Goblin Fruit (Impspired, to be released in 2021)
Stone Poetry Quarterly 