Poem: Boat Tailed Grackles

by Jonathan Andrew Perez 
www.watermelaninmag.com

Photo: Tolu Bamwo c/o nappy.co

​In the end, I let the judges of dust
implicate the boat tailed Grackles,
A highway coded up their long black tails;
 
they did not matter to us. They were
paper maché or a floating recess paper plane.
He said, it was acceptable to hurt me.
That grace will save us. That the tops of brownstones
Are a repentance, like my blood.
 
Myself, I never loved the world.
The world was crystal-encrusted
like New Hampshire in November.
 
For your sins, father, mustachioed, you heaved
sighs under shades of privilege.
Today and tonight the marsh leveled
peepers and balloon-jowl toads,
were at your doorstop, like fairies.
Somewhere out in the dark distance,
boat tailed grackles gave in-human riffs.
All that was mundane was marshaled in
and became unfamiliar.

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