Japanese Devotion and Pre-Columbian Grotesqueries Combine to Slaughter Mockingbirds
Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem
The birds ram-smashed themselves against the glass
Of windows in the Pre-Columbian
Art gallery. The wings fell dead on grass
Of wider gardens. De-Columbian
The victims flopped . . . De-everythinged since dead.
But why? Why kamikaze-break their necks
When they could fly and sing? It was the head
And face inside. The sculpture placed a hex
On swooping creatures, or they tried to kill
It with their beaks. Perhaps the mirror drove
*
The birds to deaths. Perhaps it made them spill
Their pretty lives as broken backbones dove.
The centuries pass but ungliness supreme
Sends out its evil, Satan’s laser beam.