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, “Never-Ending Birds”, 2009
Trapped in the canvas, chips just out of reach,
and a small blue rock floats through space
ready to erase us all. We have lost the possibility
of hunger: it's just earthworms and dirt now.
Like an apple core chucked from a scarred hand
from the truck, taking a score of bounces before
settling on the side of the road, we have accepted
the puppets rising up from the badlands.
The toy soldiers are out of rations but good news:
We can download what’s left of our souls,
the hockey net sticking halfway out of the ice,
what we leave without going anywhere at all.
Creak of the swing, wave of the red cape,
peanut shells scattered on the floor
in the last great steakhouse: Eat up, son.
There’s only so much snowbroth left.
The fat jay, caught in the rain, finally tears
through the starscape where there are
unlimited devil fruits. Rippling heat waves.
Perhaps, finally, the feeling of being full.
