black birds,

we’re mimics.

 

that is to say,

when I cluster

round your sweet

pearls, distracting you

while my family pecks

holes in your pockets

 

remember that we learned

to steal from you

from you, when you brought

us to these wicked skies

let your wings grow vestigial

while we toiled.

 

we’re mimics, some of us

have been copying

yall so long that

we forgot that we

have wings and ways of our

own. take that big ole crow

spreading his wings over

our city of trees, a-town.

in black mecca building

a nest out of bones

cotton and steel.

selling us out to you big white

fake bird taxidermy frauds

for some breadcrumbs and a pat

on the head.

 

the rest of us,

we copy, but we keep

too. what we steal is by

nature not ours.

your country is not mine,

and I don’t love it.

your nuclear family is not mine,

your blue-winged pigs are not mine,

and I won’t worship them.

your earth-killing hunger is not mine,

nor the powder green guilt in

your money.

 

I’m a liar and a thief,

I’ll dance on a branch,

but imma die a crow-loving crow.

I always remember

where the loot comes from,

and where it should go.

 

 

 

∞

Paul Buchanan (he/they) is a queer, Afro-Caribbean writer with roots in Guyana and the American South. His primary interests lie in the intersections between Black identity formation and trauma, and in navigating historical depictions of Black people. Currently, he is working on a collection of poems using a crow motif to explore personal relationships, racial identity, and American political culture. He has a B.A in Black Studies and English from Swarthmore College and is a recipient of both a John Russel Hayes Poetry award and a Mellon Mays Fellowship.