Figured Dark: Poems

Feeder

Feeder I bolt the grinder to my worktable and slowly feed the blades pink-marbled fat and bits of meat cut from the bellies of Herefords and Black Angus. I mix in the confettied shreds of my poems and pat this into a great lumpy mass I wedge into a butcher’s net and hang from the lowest branch of the hemlock tree. There, the cardinals, the jays, the cowbirds, the shiny starlings, and the finches, peck and gnaw and worry and preen. The birds fly over the stark red cane of the blueberry field and into a thicket of witchhazel, then flit along the creek that trickles at the edge of the woodlot. They loop back along the fence and splatter the glass of a pickup truck driven by a man leaning forward to tune a staticky radio, as dusk gathers and the birds, always hungry, fly home. 23 ...