i’ll be your dead bird

I drive through the Midwest countryside
with my eyes sharp for singing streaks
flying beyond the glow of headlights.
before the pandemic, every highway
was littered with carcasses of reds
and yellows and blues. on Midwestern
roads, there was more dead than living,
singing sweethearts gutted by front bumpers
clipping bodies. dying breaths radiated
by golden tail light. nothing is more Midwestern
than scaffolds of feathers stacking on tar,
birds as caskets of loved ones,
boutonnieres of sun-stained flowers.
windows of wind. there’s that image
of Travis Scott spreading wings on the cover
of my Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight vinyl.
every room in my house has framed paintings
of birds on the walls. I carry a Randall Cunningham
rookie card in my wallet. I press sky-beaten feathers
into the spine of every book. the roads are clean
now and the sky is full of beautiful birds
and we are all inside, so let me be the glow
of guts on a windshield looking like a dozen suns
smudged by god’s thumb.
Travis says Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight
is about growing up with your friends
in the Midwest, so I text Andy
and say “Midwest ‘til death”
and my eyes linger in the sprawling silence
enveloping the 2,200 miles of distance between us
before he heart-reacts to the message
and leaves my follow-up on read.
I tie the strings of my Ohio Against the World hoodie
into a heart under my denim jacket.
I want so badly to be a dead bird in a state
that loves me back, a buoying delicate body
in the December snow. an opera of yellow or red or blue
rupturing through a province of ice.
I want to crawl into a hungry mouth,
the hungry mouth of a homestead
I cannot move away from. bury me in the pockets
of a pencil skirt threaded with state lines.
bury me next to all the swelling carnations.
bury me in a burning pile of feathers
until my tongue knows song.