Shrike
a songbird with a strong sharply hooked bill, often impaling its prey of small birds, lizards, and insects on thorns.
I as the butcherbird
in my open larder
take my body's knife
and let I take the sweet runts and their sweet heads
taste their warmth from the inside
felt sprawling from the inside of I
Never ever a love like that.
A Leucistic Lovebird
Leucistic - (of an animal) having whitish fur, plumage, or skin due to a lack of pigment.
I cannot hide
The Mother did deny
my colored down
Dawns hitch and I am
still as pale as spit
You see, I cannot hide
and for my cloven spore
birders trip over their own feet
Birders’ heels are most raw for me
and I cannot hide from the mucking
But I see fine
I see fine lines between the
egg and the muck;
the bowerbird and his bower,
the thrasher and his thicket
For the Birders
I fasten my girdle
and knot my indomitable corset—
for my breast is the most beautiful—
and let Mother save the mucked
Eagle’s Courtship
Taking each other by the talons in mid-air, then free-falling as a sign of trust and loyalty.
The Mother has I hold my
given me breath,
unfailing for
happiness what if
my your
love,
is talon in
flight- talon, feather by
less, precious feather,
and with wind
my and sky our
eggs only witness.
just sit And for you
and rot? no dove
has
ever love’s
flown this parachute been
high, no lovebird; punctured,
only I, always, turned drowsy?
forever— Just like my
because heart, if
the truth your love’s
has without
wings:
If it It keeps
falls, flying,
I’ll still dear,
It. be and I.
bound to so will
Athena’s Owl Starts Remembering
When I was bone and down,
my mother was sick in winter
and dropped dead out the nest
like a fig
so, I stared and stared
past the darkness, at the
doily-ferns, the snow prey,
at The Inevitable She
who in the cold
found me shivering in nothing
but her skin linens, staring
back at me in darkness
in my cup in the tree
then drew me gently to her warm breast.
I may be Glauca, Nyctimene, Athene Noctua,
but she calls me daughter.
~
High in the cradle
of Olympus, white
as pearl, where there
is nothing but the throbbing
of godliness—which springs from
fingernails, eyelashes—
and the limitless quiet,
I am the only one there
when she sheds her cloth,
lies defeated and dimpled
upon her sheets,
pretending that she
doesn’t need warmth
for her iron thighs.
But I see in the darkness.
I see the way only a blade
of Selene’s pale cheek
catches against her wet, spilling one
while she sleeps,
the way she folds her lips
in ugly ways to muffle her cries
so not anyone could catch
the winking of her sob—
for if Athena cries, who will
see through darkness but I?
~
When I was bone and down,
my mother was sick in winter
and winged me closer to
draw me to the warmth of her breast.
Then who but The Inevitable She
to widen the mitt of her palm
and take that puckered hen,
thumbing herself into its
thick bloody throat like only a
woman, mortal and crazed for a child?
Who but She, to make me love her
with dirtied hands, a dirty work she did,
to take my face into her elbow and say,
This is a good thing,
you are a good thing, daughter,
and to lick the hen’s blood from her hands?
A Jackdaw and Her Lover Get Stuck
Up and at-em
in the caddow-dawn,
me and my fellow—
us, unbanded merry-birds—
swigged sweetly at our meadow,
taking pleasure in the
brushing of laurel and shrub
with our licorice toes.
We went bunking in an idle nest.
Ducked under dove muck
and dreamt of the shore
(which the gulls cow-cow, “the honorable gulf!”
We hadn’t seen it, yet. Too busy with folk.)
In the daw’s dawn,
we sipped sky, braided together like tallgrass cane
like widow’s bane, sound and safe,
our heads like curds, the heads of cabbages that grow in knots,
noggins like nuts not broken yet.
The mockingbirds chucked, waking,
the pelicans
continued their descent. We watched from the myrtle,
and God Bless that Crape Myrtle.
With no knowledge of ‘end’
like stunted fools
We had ridden wind
as if it owed us
down to the crevice
(which yawned wide for our consideration,)
in between
a tall fence
and a metal
generator.
We started pounding.
Screaming, rough and wrinkled
feathers twisted, into knots of dark
we stumbled, endless
endless, squawking
for air, air,
for open
air of salt and sky.
My shoulders hurt awfully,
and my feet.
Then the folk came
mumbling in their thick-slabbed throats,
surprised, like deer are,
And I am embarrassed
of my pounding
of my stuck
I am embarrassed
of my fellow,
who won’t look at me anymore
I hear the lady speak, and she—
well, she thought we were… “Copulating..!”
cuffed by fits of love,
clawing like mad against the fence
like a whorebird
and I remain embarrassed! Blushed
as much as feathers could.
But one girl-folk didn’t rest, she stood up on a bloke of a wall
like a half-a-coque that stood there idle, craned her head into the slip of air between
the fence and the generator,
and saw us jackdaws a-pounding,
not… “making love,” only surviving
and her face, as fearful as mine.
Fear’s heel was spurred,
and it went along, unspooling—
but she remained, chewing her lip,
sticking broken-off branches into the slats of the fence,
preparing a take-off spoke and into free.
I stared at those mere twigs,
like stupid fingers,
dizzying.
Heart like a wheel, treading.
My fellow,
he is up and at-em
like some freedom pervert,
eyes big and gone for air
as he scrabbles, hissing,
up and
onto that spoke
just like the folk had with the half-a coque
step here, step there, unfolding into free.
He waits for me,
and that breaks my heart.
The folk keep flapping their
tongues, smacking them against their throats like
sopping drums,
telling me, come on, come on,
in their human whine,
but, God, I am tired.
God, let me rest, just for a moment.
Right here in the quaking grime
where here generator runs
mad, humming dreadfully in the ear.
I thread our dawn into my breathy loom,
lungs like socks, quilt-skinned;
it did feel like a sort-of
beginning, didn’t it?
There is a sleepy red frog in my breast
gone diddly, lazy, languid,
stutters, sweeps, stills,
then dies beneath the ribs.
I can taste its rot,
ting goes my head, ting
goes the bell,
of my end,
clockwork. It grows darker and darker still,
like sodden mulch; night; my crown
I stretch a final time, kyaar, blackened,
to look at you, my slack-jawed jackdaw—
do you see your beaten feyre?
Do you see
the gallows, caddow,
of which I am placed intricate, curious?
Will you bless me with your divine consideration?
Do you hear me when
I bend my head back to say,
“I am now for the dirt and worms, my love?”
It was a beautiful morning.
Let me think a little more
about it all.
Jesus’ Goldfinch
It is said that when Jesus was taken to the cross, a goldfinch came and tried to pluck a thorn from his crown— it failed, and Jesus’ holy blood stained its face, tainting the generations after it. Goldfinches are known for picking off the petals of flowers, particularly zinnias.
Petal by petal, I rip from
the zinnias, whispering,
He loves me, He loves me not…
He loves me, He loves me not…
And when I see him waddle on his heels
to Calvary, his chest a beaten blue,
eyes as wrinkled ditches,
the birds, they mourn.
When I see you strung up,
infant again, as effigy,
my insides batter up
and grind, because O,
My Lord,
you are not crying with me.
He loves me, He loves me not…
You hang heavy like shame,
but without none— treasure
nailed like grainy plank to a plank,
a river goes, running
down your palms,
what a beautiful color—
of berry, gums, velvet—
I’d live forever, had I been
bathed in it.
He loves me, He loves me not…
Let me,
as I scream, as if cracking,
loom forth, slip as wicker,
for your blessed head
where thorns lie.
I will be your savior.
Gnashing poorly at
your bloodied hair
like straw, innocent still
my face mops, and it mops,
my bill drilling past
curdled sop of
scalp and thorn
like the shrike to the rat.
He loves me, He loves me not…
O, your eyes,
glassed in apathy,
my savior, as effigy
just as you were when you were borne
from the Madonna
I want to break my face
against your face
Will you feel it? Will you feel?
He loves me, He loves me not…
And the people, they nod like buoys
against the wind hearts spitting
out into the air, their cries splitting its stitches,
and they think,
Are we heard from up there?
Picking zinnias,
petal by petal,
whispering,
He loves me, He loves me not…
He loves me, He loves me not…
