Startling the starling

Abstract

startling the starling Jacob Saenz (bio) I heard the birds chirp louder than usuallouder even than when the cat standsupright on hind legs like a meerkat& peers at them through blind slats I turned to the window & saw a starlingatop the a/c unit which sits atop a bird's nestlodged in the crevice of the unit's base& the window's concrete ledge the small round brown sparrows shrieked& cheeped as the large stardusted birdmade its way from the top toward the bottom& out of view from the cat's eyes & mine I wasn't sure if starlings eat other birds& rather than let nature act naturallyI acted like a human & interferedw/what I couldn't see but imagined: a bird w/a galaxy swirling in its featherspecking at eggs & hatcheting awayat hatchlings w/its beak & feetwhile an egg bearer screeched from afar I tapped & tapped on the plastic wingsattached to the climate-corroding cooler [End Page 124] & startled the starling away from the nestalong w/the rest of the birds & cat too I went back to my desk & looked it upon a whirring computer—european starlingsdo eat other birds' eggs & compete w/nativespecies for nest materials & sites how typical & colonial of the birdintroduced to north america in latenineteenth century & now permanentresidents in all illinois habitats now the cat's returned to its sentry postto gaze upon the sparrows resumingtheir chirruping despite outside forcesdisrupting their song & nest making [End Page 125] Jacob Saenz Jacob Saenz is the author of Throwing the Crown, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Memorious, PANK, RHINO, Tammy, and other journals. A CantoMundo fellow, he's been the recipient of a Letras Latinas Residency, a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, and a Latinx Scholarship from the Frost Place. Copyright © 2022 University of Nebraska Press