DRECK

TRAVIS SHOSA

BIRD BOX

the other day there was a mangled bird in my mailbox,
tiny bones and feathers, guts strewn
about the half-cylinder like a crunchy jackson pollock
or your go-to meal at your favorite
hole-in-the-wall restaurant. cruelty is always on the menu here
or anywhere but especially in suburbia.
go downtown and you might get shot at the bowling alley
over a dice game but hey, there was money at stake,
you are so good at rationalizing survival but suburban cruelty
is born of boredom, repression, ennui, dissociation.
hell, did little timmy three doors down smash this
thing with a small boulder into something resembling caveman cereal
or was it his alter? that little shit was raised online so he must
have a few by now, a whole platoon of internalized moral scapegoats.
jerry picks which pigeon to whack, jimmy decides on the number of strikes
with the rock, terry pinpoints which mailbox to stuff the body,
timmy disappointingly wags his pointer,
growing fucking numb.
the other day there was my ex-girl reading bird box
in front of some version of me. eighty-five pounds sopping wet,
she smiles titan wide and i contemplate willful blindness
and soon i will place her little bones and blood grey plumage
within the mailbox of me and whoever opens me next
they will see what i have seen.
the other day i had a key lime greek yogurt for breakfast
or was that this morning? sometimes i can only remember
the bird box and every time i do the bile rises,
little bones caught in my throat so i talk to the untrained betterhelp
therapist who is ill-equipped to deal with this
and tell him about all of the dead birds in the mailbox of me.

Travis Shosa (they/them) is a writer from Spring, TX. Their poetry is featured or forthcoming in Maudlin House, BRUISER, Eulogy Press, The Bloomin' Onion, fifth wheel press, Eunoia Review, Burial Magazine, Michigan City Review of Books, Some Words and more. They also host the reading series Dodo Eraser and they are a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. Their music journalism has been featured in Pitchfork, Bandcamp Daily, The Line of Best Fit, PAPER, and more.