A Small Tin Parrot Pin

"A Small Tin Parrot Pin" is the third song of Lori Laitman's Men With Small Heads cycle, which sets the poetry of Thomas Lux. This particular poem is one of the new poems in Lux's New and Selected Poems of Thomas Lux: 1975-1995.

Date: 2000Composer: Lori LaitmanText: Thomas LuxSong Collection: Men With Small Heads

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Text

A Small Tin Parrot Pin
by Thomas Lux

Next to the tiny bladeless windmill
of the salt shaker
on the black tablecloth
is my small tin parrot pin,
bought from a bin,
75 cents, cheap, not pure tin–an alloy,
some plastic toy tin?
The actual pin, the pin that pins the pin,
will fall off soon
and thus the parrot,
if I wear it, which I will,
on my lapel. I’ll look down
and it’ll be gone.
Let it be found by a child,
or someone sad, eyes
on the sidewalk, or what a prize
it would be for a pack rat’s nest.
My parrot’s paint
is vivid: his head’s red, bright yellow of breast,
and belly, a strip of green,
then purple, a soft
creamy purple, then bright–you know
the color–parrot green
wing feathers. Tomorrow I think
I’ll wear it on my blue coat.
Tonight, someone whom I love
sleeps in the next room,
the room next to the room with the black tablecloth,
the salt shaker, the parrot pin.
She is very sleepy
and less impressed than I
with my parrot
with whom, with which I
am very pleased.

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Sheet Music

Men With Small Heads (Baritone)

Composer(s): Lori Laitman

Song(s): 1. Men With Small Heads
2. Refrigerator, 1957
3. A Small Tin Parrot Pin
4. Snake Lake

Voice Type: Low

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Men With Small Heads (Countertenor or Mezzo-Soprano)

Composer(s): Lori Laitman

Song(s): 1. Men With Small Heads
2. Refrigerator, 1957
3. A Small Tin Parrot Pin
4. Snake Lake

Voice Type: Medium

Buy via Classical Vocal Reprints

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