The Birds

Alayna Stein
The birds are carrying
tiny cups of coffee in their beaks,
dripping flocks worth of pots over the city
and its sleepers
but workers
who swim now
through the caffeinated
streets, like Venice.
How else could their eyes grow so wide?
The birds pull the wires
attached at the limp wrists of the sleepers
that clack tirelessly over the keyboards,
tugging the bodies
through the seas of each other,
towing the corners of their frowns
south from their eardrums.
How else could they hear the way these words work like waves:
The birds are waving wet wings
to the music
with oversized headphones
pressed against their ear feathers,
with their audios
dangling down into the clouds,
threatening to thrash through the landscapes
to be captured by the bluffs condemned to echo
through the earth and vibrate up
through my bones.
How else could this scene have been orchestrated?
The birds
with all of their clashing feathers
fan faces onto forest walls
as the sunlight flashes through the treetops
and the birds peacefully peck
at my eyelids so they twitch
and I tremble as a
broken image on a tree trunk.
How else could the world have pieced me as one?