List of Dead Birds

[1] The seagulls squall over the shore. One is old, slow. My dog arches in the air, jaw hooks into the crook of its wing. They momentarily eclipse the sun. [2] A procession of Canadian geese walks across the road in leisure. The next day: a body, thick, snake-like neck parallel to the earth. [3] I am dizzy. I am alone in New York. I meet my sister. She serves me duck, Italian-style. [4] By winter, the dried-up nesting ground reveals hundreds of crystalized bodies. Long, empty bills of white pelicans. [5] Covered in sweat dust, I climb to the guest bathroom. The cat left her dismemberment in the bath. [6] A sparrow drowns in my grandparents’ kiddie pool—ankle-deep water. We wrap it in newspaper. March three times around the garden. My grandma explains the action of wailing. [7] T. H. White gave his goshawk a window of starlight and tied his jesses with twine. By morning he was lost—only lost. [8] The thundercrack and orange dusting of a clay pigeon. [9] A photograph of my uncle, strung in garlands of birds hung by their feet. [10] The ivory-billed woodpecker, a ghostly bird whose long-rumored survival in the bottomland swamps of the South had haunted seekers for generations, will be officially declared extinct. [11] The sound of a nest, chest-high and elbow-deep in the vines choking a just-sold house. [12] The snap of an alligator’s jaws so distinct it echoes across open marshland. Egress. Egress. [13] The parakeet I took—hemorrhaging around an egg—to the vet and they put her down in the back room that night. [14] Flocks of passenger pigeon darkened the sky until they were hunted to extinction. [15] It is my first-time hunting. I raise my rifle to the blackbird. My ears ring. In the corner of my eye, I see its wings pointing downward—in flight.

Brief, Bright Bodies

A ribcage comes undone to a heart pounding 728 beats per minute
to sustain flight; a digestive tract absorbs and expels flayed fruit
every 30 minutes to stay alive. At a certain point, echolocation
decouples from flight, no more ghosts materializing
with each feverish pump of sinew, each wingbeat an old kind
of muscle memory. When my arms draw breath against water,
they remember what it is to be a whole body. When flying foxes
anoint their snouts in the river, they only have one natural predator.

Eastern tube-nosed bats inhale scents three-dimensionally,
each nostril a hand-cut reed, drawing water, twitching like my dog’s last
breath on the metal table, her legs folded beneath her. Egyptian fruit bats’
eyes do not open for 9 days. Their mewls sound in their colony’s dialect.
The land hybridizes around them: concrete spanning rivers, metal teeth
biting into the earth. Electric wires net across sky with the brief,
bright bodies of bats.

Before grief comes adrenaline––a euphoria that quivers like a heartbeat
in flight. Movement kindles memory. When light beams against falling
snow, I see a figure on the hill just ahead. Time gnashes its teeth against
the foggy windows I last saw you through. I can no longer flex my fingers
and feel your grip––so tight we both tremble––only one of us knowing
you had already decided to die.

Farmers build electric grids over their trees to kill bats.
Even gnarled and burned, they appear to be roosting.
They still lose 260,000 pounds of fruit a year.

Budding

a newborn hedgehog’s second skin
dries and shrinks / after it’s born its
quills pierce / the afterbirth / slough
like a scab / a newborn hedgehog is
neither hard nor soft / neither is the
adult / in its keratin carapace a gentler
/ brother to the porcupine / distant
ancestor to the shrew / of these
intermediaries / they are closest to /
the moonrat / hedgehogs mimic the
shape of the moon / because they
know / wolves cannot swallow it /
only howl / only mistake a hedgehog
for / an owl’s eye that looks / like the
head of a mushroom / from the
treetops only a fox eye is / chatoyant
/ because bobcats / never worshipped
the moon but taught the stray / to bat
it between her paws / all hedgehogs
partake in anointment / when they
come across / the dung of a
wirehaired terrier / rolled lovingly by
a beetle / they bury themselves / in the
musk and teach / humans how to
mask / how it feels when a dog /
doesn’t recognize his master’s / scent
/ a hedgehog / is neither hard nor soft
/ the way nails soften in the river / the
way a river softens stone / the way
water can be described as either hard
or soft / by the rate at which it leaves
/ parts of itself behind / how a
snowstorm comes down / in spirals
we cannot see / see the quills /
budding from the earth / in spring //

C. E. Janecek is a Czech American writer and freelance editor with an MFA in poetry from Colorado State University. Janecek's work has appeared in Poetry, Sugar House Review, Gulf Coast, Booth, and elsewhere. Online at www.cewritespoems.com.

Published January 15 2024