David Hernandez is the author of five poetry collections, including Hello I Must Be Going, and has been awarded two Pushcart Prizes as well as the Kathryn A. Morton Prize. He lives with his wife, the writer Lisa Glatt, in Southern California, where he teaches creative writing at California State University, Long Beach.

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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