This time the jay, fat as a boot, bluer
than sky gone blue now that the rain has
finished with us for a while, this loud jay at the neck of the black walnut keeps cawing I want, I want but can't finish his clause.
Hard runoff has spread the driveway with seeds, green talcum, the sex of things, packed
like plaster against shutters and tool boxes, sides of the barn, while the force of water pouring down from the stopped-up gullet of gutter has drilled holes deep in the mud. Yet the world of the neighborhood is still just the world. So much, so much. Like the bulldog next door, choking itself on a chain to guard the yard of the one who starves it.
— Hungry by David Baker from “Never-Ending Birds”, 2009
Eyes empty, everything empty,
crowd gone home to eat soup
until the last drop is gone —
Think, what will we be when
the delivery man goes extinct?
Even the penthouse feels like
a Great Nothing now,
and the glasses-half-empty
aren’t even glasses now,
they’re cracked plastic cups.
When the Oracle’s too high
to properly prognosticate
we take refuge in a burnt-out
Carolla, calculating the distance
to our next glass of water.
The dusty stuffed moose head
knows how empty you feel,
even as you sit, seemingly rich,
with the entire catalogue of
TV hits at your fingertips.
Windows don’t open anymore:
It’s just the shattering
we seek, the trysts to make
us full again, the blowtorch
ready to burn us whole.
