The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: These Hollowed Bones by Amelia Díaz Ettinger

---

Brewer’s or Grackle

          Euphagus cyanocephalus or
         Quiscalus niger?

i’m always home, but wistfulness follows
me as tail feathers on a bird––Brewer’s blackbird
they cluster on the wooden broken fence
near our reeds––males with their curious yellow eyes

that seems to shift lost crevices inside of me,
their iridescent heads––that purple shimmer
an oil stain green, these lushness takes me back
to a childhood of tropical rain, Fichus trees,

and a plaza filled with the chinchilín song
of his cousin––an ecological equivalent––
the Antillean Grackle
could i beg for a similar fortune?

if my wish were granted, the child in me would run
unabashed after that long tailed chango
the perfect name for a silly bird that shows off
his large family––a gatherer full of mischief,

but the Grackle is not here in this colder climate
here the aloof Brewer’s, secretive but for singing
his own cacophonous song to his immediate brood
i can sense he doesn’t feel the loss of home

unlike me, his home is home––where the nest rests
its twiggy cup near brothers and sisters
a loose colony of familiar ancestry––my jealousy
at least for this summer, for this breeding season

---