Five Thousand Blackbirds
by Melissa Slayton
(published in Tinge Magazine, Issue 1)
After the death of blackbirds and drum fish in Beebe, Arkansas, on 1/1/11.
Say what you will about science and
the deadly firmament
that is the New Year’s sky.
Say the birds hit power lines.
Fireworks, with magnanimous
splatter, jarred them
from their cedar roost. But I
have seen a cat’s mouth
ajar with blackbird
and that same blackbird
pry open the unwilling
jaw, skyrocket towards
the roving moon.
Blackbirds wouldn’t die
from hitting power lines.
Ignored by augurs,
they demand attention
for the world’s injuries.
It’s a graceful way
to go, though, their fiery
shoulders sagging
in snowy puddles.
And also beautiful, the way
the drum fish scattered on
the Arkansas River’s
shore. I bet people
who walked there
on January 1st sighed
and their stomachs heaved
with distaste.
But the lovers who hurt
with a fresh pang
stayed on the shore,
enchanted with something
they could not reach.
They recognized the sense
of falling from the sky,
the fear of scientists who,
after love breaks you,
will blame only the fireworks.
I have loved this poem since I read it in Tinge Magazine when it came out in 2011. The poet took a news story of two different events that happened around the same time as the basis of her poem. Then she ran with it in amazing ways!
I have links to news stories about the 2 events below, but I think Slayton does a great job of describing what happened. In Beebe, Arkansas, blackbirds fell from the sky on New Year's Eve. In Ozark, Arkansas, drumfish washed ashore, dead, on the Arkansas River on December 30, 2010. (The poet kind of/sort of placed both events in Beebe, which is fine--poetry is not nonfiction.)
The speaker then questions the scientists' explanation for the bird deaths, with a cat anecdote and this incredible statement about blackbirds: "they demand attention/for the world’s injuries."
The speaker then moves to the dead fish, imagining people out for a walk would see them and be disgusted. However, she also imagines lovers coming across these fish and sets them in opposition to the scientists--emotion vs. logic, in a sense. The lovers, like poets, see more than just dead fish.
How creative is that?!? Again, what I love about this poem: using a real event as a basis and then taking off with it, description, details, all of the twists and turns and connections, the ending, and the speaker's voice. I think it is easy to see why this poem has stuck with me after so many years.
Here are those links:
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