Poet's Choice

They are my homeys of the air

with their mousse-backed hair and Crayola

black coats like small fry hoods who smoke

and joke about each other's mothers,

virginal sisters, and the sweet arc of revenge.

These birds spurn my uneaten celery sticks,

feckless gestures, ineffective hosannas.

They tag one another, shrill and terrible,

caroling each to each my weekly wages.

But they let me pass, then flit away.

They won't mess with me this time--

they know where I live.

I like the way "each to each" sounds both like Renaissance lyric poetry and the screech of the birds. I like the literary flamboyance of "feckless gestures, ineffective hosannas" played against the vernacular flamboyance of "small fry hoods who smoke/and joke." And I like the way the merging of birds with gang boys finds its resolution in the last line, with "where I live" implying that the poet is not completely unlike the bird-toughs. "Where I live" is part of the street-threat but also a phrase that means "what is important to me." That implication of fellow-feeling with his subject is part of Gloria's imaginative generosity.

(Eugene Gloria's poem is from his book "Hoodlum Birds." Penguin. Copyright © 2006 by Eugene Gloria.)