Poetry Fiction 2009 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Hungry

By David Baker

This time the jay, fat as a boot, bluer
than sky gone blue now that the rain has
finished with us for a while, this loud jay
at the neck of a black walnut keeps cawing
I want, I want—but can’t finish his clause.
Hard runoff has spread the driveway with seeds,
green talcum, the sex of things, packed
like plaster against shutters and tool boxes,
the sides of the barn, and the force of water
pouring down from the stopped-up gullet
of gutter has drilled holes deep in the mud.
Yet the world of the neighborhood is still just
the world. So much, so much. Like the mutt
next door, choking itself on a chain
to guard the yard of the one who starves it.

David Baker’s new collection of poems, Never-Ending Birds, will be published this fall. He teaches at Denison University.