David Hernandez is the author of three poetry collections: Hoodwinked, winner of the 2010 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry; Always Danger, winner of the 2005 Crab Orchard Series; and A House Waiting for Music. He has also written two novels for young adults, No More Us for You and Suckerpunch. Hernandez lives in Long Beach, California, and is married to the writer Lisa Glatt.

Questions about Butterflies

by David Hernandez

We are three in a gallery high-ceilinged
and boxed in light, six eyes lost in the geometry
of butterflies jigsawed to canvas, not painted
but the actual fluttering things. Think
the shattered neon of church windows, mosaics
and kaleidoscopes. Think beauty blown apart
and pieced back together. We are six hands
flitting up to point out the multitude of wings:
yellow, owl-eyed, iridescent blue wings
and wings of velvet black, veined in green.

People on couch
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