Birds Without Music

by Christopher Locke

5,000 red-winged blackbirds
rain unbidden from an Arkansas
sky like trench coats shot to pieces,
streets and lawns ankle-deep in little
bodies. A white-crested laughing
thrush bloated under a scrim of waste
water at the Miami Zoo, its black
streak across the eyes like an homage
to Annie Lennox until I reconsider,
sure God isn’t a fan. The Baltimore
oriole with its head blown out, my brother
trembling as he tossed the pellet gun
into the rosebush and ran. The barn
swallow practicing his cursive until
my picture window, thud knocking
my attention away from the television
where a U shaped throng of republicans
ruffled themselves with speeches
on terror. And you, silent
on the long flight home
to America, news of your brother’s
death only hours old, and how the night
before you said you wished to be
a starling, because starlings sing
for hours, sometimes longer.

 

Christopher Locke is the Nonfiction Editor for Slice magazine in Brooklyn. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous publications, including Verse Daily; Southwest Review; Poetry East; Arc, (Canada); The Nervous Breakdown; 32 Poems; The SHOp, (Ireland); West Branch; RATTLE; The Literary Review; Ascent; The Sun; Connecticut Review, Upstreet, Agenda, (London), and on both National Public Radio and Ireland’s Radio One. Chris has five chapbooks of poetry and has received two Dorothy Sargent Poetry Awards, as well as grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, New Hampshire Council on the Arts, and Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain). His first full-length collection of poems, End of American Magic, was released by Salmon Poetry in 2010. Waiting for Grace & Other Poems (Turning Point Books) and the collection of essays Can I Say (Kattywompus Press) were both released in 2013. His essay/poetry collection about his travels through Latin America, Ordinary Gods (Salmon Poetry), and his first book for children, The Heart Flyer (tapStory), were both recently accepted for publication.