The birds aren’t twitching mid-bush anymore
The birds are fighting every morning now so there’s a pile of dead ones outside your window. They peck against the glass to try to break in but it doesn’t work out because they are dead.
You’re awake & think, I’ve never really liked birds but maybe you do. I don’t know, I say, but I don’t think so.
Their bodies don’t block the whole window so light still gets through your empty bottles decor. It’s green or yellow or brown but light & now a dead bird.
There are bird feathers between your teeth, naked bodies on the glass. You said I go to sleep most nights sad about something about us & it shouldn’t be that way, since it maybe defeats the purpose. But don’t feel bad or sad or that’s not why I said it.
I’m bird bones & I’m listening to the window almost break.
B E A K
birds eat and
kill inside
are nail ice rows
torches down leading
down lower still
F E A T H E R
flower erasing another
tooth hammer
eats reason loves
ruins narrow openings
attack air
edges over
and offer
other
mouthopen teatime
aromas will slip together
through mumble
soaked silver
elderflower infuses her
hands envelop our
richtered nausea
easy riding
nose-dive
gaining river
T E E T H
tower edge excerpts
tongue headfuls
of dead x
-ed out
eats won’t grow
camellia nectar
again
eggshells ease ebony
gods down
rivers raging upstream full
petals eat up
touch love
shoulder seas
E G G
echoes grow gorges cracks
running over
heads over rumps
over well
grey
early eggtooth
spoils slightly
Janice Majewski is a poet living in Northern Virginia. Her work is forthcoming in Reality Beach, Moonsick Magazine, and the Cincinnati Review.
