BLACKBIRDS

for frank o’hara

toni morrison would say, he dragged that child by her hair. her hair!
her fellow red-wingeds sprang to her like mama blue jay
will come at you, gloves to the ground, and flat out belt you
in the head if jay jr. is sitting on the patio table.

just bikinis and bare feet, they flapped around—rage-afraid.
their Girl pressed through the earth, in her pink triangles,
with that brute of a crow perched—glock and badge fists
wound in the braid of tender feathers under authority’s uniform sneer.

a thirty-something, forty-something, fifty-something, sixty…
rat, in khaki cargo shorts, tan polo shirt, ubiquitous go-team baseball cap
and sandals, strolls past mayhem as a ten year-old colonialist unnotices
a slave auction or a southern man a lynching. scarecrows off-duty
compassion’s cornfield.

across and over patio tables of devilled eggs, seven-layer dip,
barbecue chicken, collards, codfish, patacones, suya,
satay, tamales…