{"id":1541,"date":"2009-01-02T15:43:08","date_gmt":"2009-01-02T15:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1541"},"modified":"2009-01-02T15:43:08","modified_gmt":"2009-01-02T15:43:08","slug":"alice-folkart-is-being-stirred-by-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/alice-folkart-is-being-stirred-by-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Folkart is being stirred by birds"},"content":{"rendered":"


Hawaiian Chicken \u2013 Not a Recipe<\/span>

A fine flock of feral chickens<\/span>
flutters and budgets beside Pali Highway<\/span>

Feathers ruffle, rusted by the rain,<\/span>
downy breast dusted black with mildew. <\/span>

Rooster-kin, alert, proprietary, swift-eyed,<\/span>
herds his wind-up chicks toward the hen harem.<\/span>

Tiny brains in weensy heads search out<\/span>
tasty bits, wriggling worms, juicy grubs<\/span>

Scratching, slicing with skeletal yellow feet<\/span>
in rotted leaves at the edge of the forest<\/span>

Raging traffic roars a foot away<\/span>
as unreal to them as distant galaxies are to us. <\/span>

~ ~ ~ ~ ~<\/span>

What Stirs That Bird? <\/span>

What stirs that bird in the night?<\/span>
He should be sleeping, silent,<\/span>
yet he rips the curtain of sleep<\/span>
with his sharp beak, a tweak <\/span>
in time.  The clock says three,<\/span>
but for me, it might be two or four,<\/span>
I just want to shut the door on him. <\/span>

It's not right, this time of night.<\/span>
His job is to herald the dawn,<\/span>
not caw like the spawn of the fiend.<\/span>
I leaned toward liking birds and their song,<\/span>
but this one's gone wrong, he's waking the bats,<\/span>
scaring the cats, maybe it's rats that have climbed<\/span>
in the tree where he and his family are housed<\/span>
and roused him to raucous defense. <\/span>

My fear is that for me to hear him<\/span>
is a slim omen of evil, a thought<\/span>
like a weevil that burrows so deep<\/span>
in my heart, the innocent start <\/span>
of another dark night of the soul. <\/span>


* Alice Folkart is a poet and short story writer living on the island of Oahu in Hawaii<\/span>

<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hawaiian Chicken \u2013 Not a RecipeA fine flock of feral chickensflutters and budgets beside Pali HighwayFeathers ruffle, rusted by the rain,downy breast dusted black with mildew. Rooster-kin, alert, proprietary, swift-eyed,herds his wind-up chicks toward the hen harem.Tiny brains in weensy heads search outtasty bits, wriggling worms, juicy grubsScratching, slicing with skeletal yellow feetin rotted leaves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}