Poems by Shannon Finck
Archives: by Issue | by Author Name
Trash Birds
by Shannon Finck
From Canary Spring 2023
Shannon writes near the South River Forest in a city which occupies Muscogee/Creek territory. Her watershed is Sugar Creek, where she saw her first green heron.
1.
Above:
thin slip of starlings
shiver up a skyscraper,
in and out of sun on glass—
seeing through them,
but not the immaculate seam
of synchronized flight.
The windstressed flutes
of their bones beneath
iridescent breasts
seek a nestle, an eave
where there are none.
This killing brutalist building.
2.
Below:
sparrows—vagabonds
of parking garage
and shopping cart,
eat cigarette butts,
learn not to see
their own reflections,
not to flail against the question
of what real is—birds
or images of birds abstracted
by the city’s austere shimmer,
a glittering, high-flying, perfect
right angle. A drone.
© Shannon Finck