INTERIOR LEAST TERN
Added to Endangered Species Act list in 1985; removed in 2021 due to recovery.
Listen: a tinier sonneteer
trots, teeters, on air, a sitter,
its nest a sentient lantern
lit. Tenants on inlets,
islets, sea lair loiterers
raise teenier tenors,
eaters, learners.
Earlier: linear terrains
erase alterities, rare
litanies rot. Oil
anointers enter, entertain,
earn, steal, litter.
Later: errors start
to learn, alert to lost
relations, atone,
restore a saltier sentinel.
Internalise non-territorial
rites: not silent, not lost,
no state, no lease, no store.
Solar tonalities rise, resonate
eternal, near.
Brent Armendinger is the author of Street Gloss (The Operating System, 2019) and The Ghost in Us Was Multiplying (Noemi Press, 2015), both of which were finalists for the California Book Award in Poetry. Brent’s poems and translations have recently appeared in Anomaly, Asymptote, Bennington Review, Conjunctions, The Georgia Review, Ghost Proposal, Green Mountain Review, Interim, and Tinfish. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships at Mineral School, Blue Mountain Center, Headlands Center for the Arts, Willapa Bay AIR, and the Community of Writers. Brent teaches creative writing at Pitzer College and lives in Los Angeles.