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      December 14, 2021Birds Aren’t Real AbecedarianDevon Balwit

      Admit it. There’s always one outside your window
      bobbing on a wire, wearing one, broadcasting back to
      Central Command: You in the coffeeshop
      dissing POTUS while a crow dithers by the dumpster,
      evanescing as soon as you emerge. A cloud of
      finches follows as you stroll with a friend
      griping at the grim state of the union. Or those geese
      hovering in the park at the BLM protests, hashtag #
      inching closer, faking a grab at some
      Jack in the Box scraps while measuring jawlines beneath
      knit balaclavas, stooges of the kakistocracy.
      Lilliputian hummingbirds locking in on your subletters,
      making note of who and how many enter and leave.
      Note the ridiculous number of robins next time,
      one under every tree, openly
      provoking with that repetitive peeping.
      Question the downward judder of the flicker—QED,
      radio equipment is heavy. There you have it,
      spies to a one. Even the peacocks, how they seduce you
      to scrutinize, to lean in close to the iridescence,
      unaware of the pupils measuring your own.
      Very clever, I say. And look at the vast supportive armature, the
      ways they mask artifice—David Attenborough, posh in the water,
      XXL t-shirts of the “national bird,” Audubon “birder’s” Xing off examples.
      You don’t want to be a sap, do you, filling feeders while the Feds
      zero-in on your whereabouts, readying to zap your whole cul-de-sac?

      from Poets Respond

      Devon Balwit

      “My head whipped around the first time a saw a Birds Aren’t Real bumper-sticker. I appreciate Peter McIndoe’s intricate and playful attempts to call attention to conspiracy theories.”