Poetry
“A Robin’s Agenda,” “Never mistake what is for what it looks like,” and “Narcissus pseudonarcissus”
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash
A Robin’s Agenda
You can’t handle the truth of X
and Y complexities in your own
species, so it’s obvious you think
you can tell our gender by the
colour of our breasts or know
that we are born all-brown.
Not that it stops (hu)man experts
like Tony, who says on Reddit that
one is bib-shaped, the other a bust.
All males act bigger & brighter ––
it is them who defend the nest ––
while females only feed the young.
A (hu)man called Charlie states,
Red breasts in females don’t serve
the same competitive purpose
as they do in males
even though he admits evolution
hasn’t caught up with his theory
yet, we are territorial. Kevin thinks
it is the males that puff their chests
to settle land matters, when instead
they just sing at each other
like at soccer matches in England
but from a higher perch.
Never mistake what it is for what it looks like
after Terrance Hayes & Dunya Mikhail
The grey squirrel works hard
How magnificent he is!
How eager & proficient
early in the morning!
He wakes up with the birds
dispatches eggs
& chicks like sycamore keys.
As if he really cares
that he digs up plants & bulbs
digs holes for nothing.
How he loves to chew tulips
to donate them to neighbours.
How he doubly dislikes daffodils
so digs them up anyway —
replaces them with monkey nuts.
Such a cheeky bushy-tailed thing!
An immigrant invited
& welcomed like the old days
taking the red one’s homes
& the red one’s food.
How he imported new diseases.
How some metaphors don’t work
like taking back control.
Our sciurus vulgaris bias
somehow turned to grey.
The Haves & Have Nots
lost in the what’s & whatnots.
Never mistake what it looks like for what it is.
My passion, for example
is mostly a form of hate.
Narcissus pseudonarcissus
We all inhabit a relationship with something — for me
it is firm stems springing from fleshy globules, heads
that tilt in a breath. My tastes vary like my desires —
for example, narcissus W. P. Milner is simple
yet handsome with silver skin and its miniature
trumpet, though I prefer the much taller martinette —
whose tolerance is broad, its multi-headed arched neck
swaying — like a bent gangster overlooks their street.
I yearn for narcissus poeticus buried six inches deep
in my perennial border — that pheasant eye red-ringed
as a rusty sheriff’s badge swinging in the shade
of his rimmed hat — starfruit with a creamy fringe.
Who would have thought that narcissus poeticus
would fail to blossom, leave me flopping, green.