Obligatory poem with starlings
I've met more starlings in poetry than in person
Where I’m from, you don’t come across starlings very often—except in poetry. You may have once heard your trivia-buff friend mention in a haphazard non sequitur that a flock of starlings is called a murmuration. Cool. Beyond that…?
Poets love starlings. I’ve fallen into the trap myself. Honestly, it’s exceptionally rare to pick up a lit mag, a chapbook, or a collection of poetry without coming across a mention of the breed at least once.
I am a contrarian at heart. If the rest of the world eats pork cheek, I say “what’s wrong with arugula?” While my neighbors dance to Billie Eilish, I turn up the volume on my Iggy and the Stooges vinyl import. If a movie is set in New York or LA, I want to put my boot through the flatscreen; there’s a whole wide world beyond those two cities, people! If a poet writes about starlings, I naturally wonder why.
Obligatory poem with starlings Sure, it’s an evocative name which, yeah, rhymes with darlings, but honestly, what is the fixation? I reckon that most of these Poets, living in NEW YORK CITY, have never seen one, nor heard her song IRL. And we are talking about birds here, right? Not death, nor the dawn, nor a murmuration of marriages gone wrong; but gliding critters, which sometimes shit on the breasts of old men, or pile up—dead—around skyscrapers. An animal which remains destitute, barely able to eke out a meal; while these Poets get rich off the bird's likeness, are wined and spined by Big Chapbook in some dim gastropub in Bushwick, or on the Lower East Side, because NEW YORK CITY is where all writers must live, where all novellas and Netflix limited series must be set, whose Poets often shit on the breasts of old men, or pile up—dead—around skyscrapers; where agents and publishers and cognoscenti butt in, over a glass of chilled Bordeaux and inject: "You know what I think this collection is missing—"
April is National Poetry Month! I aim to post a poem each weekday in celebration of the form. Some old, some new, some published, some never-before-seen.