A DOZEN BLACKBIRDS

 

There are a
dozen black birds
perched on the power lines
and fuse boxes
who guard the roads to the supermarket,
the liquor store, the beauty shop
place where infamy
is bought and worn as a wig,

 Each bird catches

a ray of vanishing sun light
and swallows it whole. 

There is a glow from
their stomachs
that radiates through skin
and the snug
fit of feathers.

 

Junk food disappears from
supermarket shelves,
and shoppers set up for dinner
in every aisle.

 

There isn’t a pack of cigarettes to
be found anywhere in the store,
and all the booze dries up in the
bottles, leaving only the dust of flavor.

 

There are no brawls
or wife beatings
under this light of night
or a grinning moon,

 

Many a woman takes off her wig
and washes her face,
there can’t be a trace of anything
they’ve tried to be,
 

It’s time to lower the
arms, loosen the ties,
undo the elastic band

that keeps these
masks cutting into our faces
until the blood
stops and no one cares
about the happiness
their neighbors used to know,

 

The sun rises and sets
as always with only
deeds in between those
far hours,

 

A card game between cars
at the end of the highway
where the workman lean against
the machinery, asking themselves
about where it was they had
to get to before the last days of earth,

 

And a woman, wigless and sober,
laughs, points to the intersection,
she points to the sky,
she points into the center of the night
at a dozen pointsthat light up with each chirp,
and crooning quarter note squall
forming a string of lights
over the freeway bridges,
talons of blackbirds gripping the wire
because nothing else would do.

 

She says
“A dozen birds have each
swallowed a ray of the sun,”
and leaves it at that as she enters her house,
closes the door, and does God knows
what else when the birds stop singing in the dark.