A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds
Birdbrains: A Lyrical Guide to Washington State Birds, edited by Susan Rich, is a one-of-a-kind Washington State bird guide. The anthology includes original pen and ink sumi-e paintings by artist Hiroko Seki, bird fact notes, and short poems/stories/memoir. Poems/prose are bird-focused rather than human centered. The bird notes include information about song, call, mating rituals, habitat, migration, climate, dark comedy, and fun facts.
This month we feature two poems, and excerpts from the bird fact notes, which are written by Stephanie Delaney. Enjoy!
Read To Say the Least by Katy E. Ellis here.
American Crow – Corvus brachyrhynchos (excerpt)
Description: The all-black American Crow is a medium-sized bird with outsized intelligence, able to use tools and to recognize human faces.
Voice: The loud, descending “caaw” of the American Crow is easily recognized by nearly everyone.
IntriguingTidbit: The American Crow is known for its complex social structures, with juveniles helping to raise younger siblings and communal gatherings of up to 10,000 birds on cold winter nights. Crows also hold rituals for their dead, one of only three bird species known to conduct bird funerals.
The Crows Start Demanding Royalties
Of all the birds, they are the ones
who mind their being armless most:
witness how, when they walk, their heads jerk
back and forth like rifle bolts.
How they heave their shoulders into each stride
as if they hoped by some chance
new bones there would come popping out
with a boxing glove on the edge of each.
Little Elvises, the hairdo slicked
with too much grease, they convene on my lawn
to strategize for their class action suit.
Flight they would trade in a New York minute
for a black muscle car and a fist on the shift
at any stale green light. But here in my yard
by the Jack-in-the-Box Dumpster
they can only fossick in the grass for remnants
of the world’s stale buns. And this
despite all the crow poems that have been written
because men like to see themselves as crows
(the head-jerk performed in the rear view mirror,
the dark brow commanding the rainy weather.)
So I think I know how they must feel:
ripped off, shook down, taken to the cleaners.
What they’d like to do now is smash a phone against a wall.
But they can’t, so each flies to a bare branch and screams.
~ Lucia Perillo
The work of Lucia Perillo (1958-2016) has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, and more. A traditional poet of mostly free-verse personal reflection, she wrote extensively about living with multiple sclerosis in her poems and essays.
