AVIAN NIGHTS
            Sherman Alexie
                p. 2003*
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Starlings have invaded our home and filled
Our eaves with their shit-soaked nests. Rats with wings,
They are scavengers we pay to have killed
By the quick exterminator who sings

In Spanish as he pulls three baby birds,
Blind and mewling, from the crawlspace above
Our son's bedroom. Without a word,
the exterminator uses a thumb

And finger to snap the birds' necks--_crack,_crack,_
_Crack_--then drops their bodies to the driveway
Below. For these deaths, I write him a check.
This is his job. He neither loves nor hates

The starlings. They just need to be removed.
Without guilt, the exterminator loads
His truck with dead birds and the tattered ruins
Of nests: twigs, string, newspapers. It is cold

When he drives away and leaves us, mother
And father of a sick son, to witness
The return of the father and mother
Starlings to their shared children, to their nest,

All of it gone, missing, absent, destroyed.
The starlings don't understand synonyms
As they flutter and make this terrible noise:
The _screech-screech-screech_ of parental instinct,

Of panic and loss. We had to do this,
We rationalize. They woke up our son
With their strange songs and the beating of wings
Through the long, avian nights. Then, at dawn

The babies screamed to greet the morning light.
What could they've been so excited about?
What is starling joy? When a starling finds
A shiny button, does it dance and shout?

Do starlings celebrate their day of birth?
Do they lust and take each other to bed?
Are they birds of infinite jest, of mirth
And merry? How do they bury their dead?

We will never know how this winged mother
And father would have buried their children.
Our son almost died at birth. His mother
And I would have buried him in silence

And blankets that smelled like us. These birds
Don't believe in silence. They scream and wail.
They attack the walls. We have never heard
Such pain from any human. Without fail,

The starlings mourn for three nights and three days.
They fly away, only to carry back
Insects like talismans, as if to say
They could bring back the dead with bird magic,

As if their hungry children could cheat death
And suddenly appear with open mouths.
At birth, our son suffocated, his breath
Stolen as he swallowed his own shit. Faith

In God at such a time seems like a huge joke.
To save our son, the doctors piped the blood
Out of his heart and lungs, then through his throat,
Via sterile tube, via smooth cut

Of his carotid, then sent his blood though
The oxygen machine, before they pushed
The red glow back into him. This was new
Technology and he lived, though he crashed

Twice that first night, and spent the next five weeks
Flat on his back. His mother and I sat
At his bedside eighteen hours a day. _Screech-
Screech-screech_. We cawed and cawed to bring him back.

We attacked the walls of the ICU
With human wings. _Screech-screech-screech_. Grief can take
The form of starlings, of birds who refuse
To leave the dead. How much love, hope, and faith

Do these birds possess? They lift their faces
And scream to the Bird-God while we grow numb.
The starlings are odd, filthy, and graceless,
But if God gave them opposable thumbs,

I'm positive they would open the doors
Of our house and come for us as we sleep.
We killed their children. We started this war.
Tell me: What is the difference between

Birds and us, between their pain and our pain?
We build monuments; they rebuild their nests.
They lay other eggs; we conceive again.
Dumb birds, dumb women, dumb starlings, dumb men.


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* from the journal _New_Letters_ 69.4, 2003

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