SOUNDING

This store smells like hot flesh
and not the good kind. Yesterday,
the birds at the store hovered
above me and my bags full
of good. I am dispersing them
into the world. The birds judge
me for my capture. This is not
a poem about precious birds,
but rather the busy Saturday
streets and all of us wanting
so badly to fill each other with
something we don’t even have
to give. I’m sick with envy, have
wasted another day on ground.

THE MECHANICAL BIRD WRITES AN ARS POETICA
(DEAR X, -B)

Dear X,
Because the dreams in which I fly
above myself are the most pleasing.
Because in winter there are never

enough words to beg for warmth.
Because if I were to paint
my face, you’d still recognize my caw.

Because my voice is a knife
waiting to be pulled on itself.
Because we become

our appointment times,
our dosage and desires.
Because this shop carnival is

our shared jaw salivating.
Because I extend my wing
and you pull it toward you.

Because the pulling
seems to be all we have.
Because it’s all we have—

the most satisfying way
to say it means something.

-B

Dear X, the aisles are crowded with people
in their never-ending hustle for goods, for something to make
something else into something else. -B

Dear X, all you want
          is tenderness, the hum
of the earth in rotation on
time & expected, something
          you can count on
an extremity, a holiday,
something clean and devout
         & you want love to be
as gentle as a bird resting
on a feeder—the quiet
         meal of night swallowing
its child into an impossible
forever: -B

Dear X, to know a machine and its heft,
the desire for shelf-stable products,
these dreadful human desires:
to be both left alone and never gone. -B

THE MECHANICAL BIRD IN WARNING

We celebrate a birthday after work.
Confetti, balloons, birds and rain fill
the room—the green-ivied walls a reminder
of the desire for the artificial to look real,
for that to ultimately look artificial
enough to keep us comfortable. Here
parrots chant of lunch deals and Mai Tai
specials and where, with each swipe
of their snouts, the elephants demand
our attention as if to grab us and say
here and now and why? He grabs us,
our attention. Was it real rain? Thunder?