I am always on watch but never
for something like this. Tonight,
509 million birds migrate
in the cover of night. Many more,
I am told, than is usual. I dream
myself barely awake, stepping out
in my bare feet to a door flung open
by flight, my arms aloft, rising,
through fistfuls of black feather,
ashy down, cricket arms caught
between molars. I muster against
sky, a thicket, my tongue a swarm.
My eyes coated with a nest’s warm
center, batting against the brush. Dark
with the musk of movement. Years ago,
I watched a kitten shriek itself
into exhaustion. Tracked the sheen
of the gator’s slow and unyielding eye
across the unmoving water. Lili says
that’s what happens. That we’re animal.
I’m exhausted by the excuse I know
is, on some level, true. I can’t believe
that scientists somewhere know every single
bird in the night air of the city I live in
and they don’t. What they see is what we tell
them. Those, who, like me, use a microphone
to log a house finch. Across state lines,
it’s radar. The size and shape of the thing
sending waves back. The names only
approximate. The common poorwill
experiences torpor. Named after its call,
a nightjar. I make myself sick
with everything I’ve said while surviving.
Andrea Giugni (she/her) is a queer Venezuelan poet, editor, and translator. She currently studies poetry at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where she lives with her partner and their two cats, Salem and Pancake. You can learn more about Andrea at www.andreagiugni.com.
Euphony Journal 