The first chapter of The Poet’s Companion is all about writing what you know. The first prompt I chose to do was about writing a daily, routine task. I found I struggled with this quite a lot. Of course, birds (I know) showed up in the poem, so my overexercised editing voice was roasting me the entire time I wrote for thinking anything good can come of the one trillionth poem with birds. But I am here to intentionally decouple the process of writing from the process of literally anything else, so here’s a quick bird poem, with all its rights sacrificed.

It’s time, again, for my daily bath of infrared, the woowooiest thing
I’ve done for this rash, these aching joints;
sitting on the patio with my book out, I am another unoriginal person
looking at birds.

The doves, mental clip arts for peace, are fighting.
Truly, one bird is suckerpunching the other,
hopping on its back and slapping his wing into its face.

The underbird flaps itself sideways,
choosing new metal pines on the fence, and the overbird chases
with his great, feathery fist, cooing and striking.

What could these city birds be fighting over? Here?
Where I can smell the hundreds of apartment units’
communal and forageable trash?
Where almost any branch of any tree is available now as the migratory birds
have felt one finger of summer’s fist
come over them and left?
Leaving the doves, the mallards, the crows, and the pigeons.

The pigeons who fight outside my work, where one wobbled
his fat neck to intimidate another
away from a crumb.

If not for the want, maybe for the rage, for the inflammation
caused by the microplastic tire dust streaming
through the entrance of the parking lot.

If not for the rage, then for the power.
A bird making a fight where no fight
needs to be made.
Like an immune system, not cut out for this world,

enraged with unpronounceable particles,
ringworm-less and bored, chasing the healthy tissue,
smacking the imprisoned skin cells around, saying
fuck you, you can’t get away from me.