Improv 2, Week 3

Flight Reflex
--Adrian Matejka

It must be winter in this part of Texas
because the grackles are posse-d up.
They toupee rooftops and wires.
They ornament trees and anything
else with room and resilience
for break and claw. Anything
that doesn't move much.

And always, that damn epistle
of chalk and fingernail.

And always,
grackles signify the need for unity
in Texas, whether bird, black, or both.

It must be winter because it feels
like spring and the man-sized bugs
have split for wherever bugs go
because of the grackles.
Like urban flight, only not, and the trees
naturally crooked for hanging
hang just a little lower, their leaves
chilling in the surplus cusp of winter.

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It must be summer in this part of Russia
because all the boars are hoof up.
They mull about the trellis and hollyhock,
hogging the smell good smells, and eating
chocolate wrappers that orphans left
under the churchyard slide.

Some wrappers have English printed across them.

Those orphans always climb the boars'
backs, when enough can be gathered to qualify a team,
the customary four for polo.

And never,do the backs of the boar perspire
or need a coat of oil in Russia, never, not even in the threat of a fry.

It can't be summer, the orphans still don knee socks,
to cover bruised knee caps from falling on winter's ice.
One boy says it feels like the northern lights
haven't flown across his eyes in eons. And one girl,
says the only time to saw fire it was just a cow
rolled in oil. Like the manic need to pick
flowers, the kind that tell the future,
the boars will always roast in the summer
days, squealing like a child falling on his knees.