To the red-winged blackbird who dive-bombs me at 6 a.m.

Bullet-train aeronaut, microwave screech.

Bullet-train aeronaut, microwave screech.
You think you’re so hot with your stoplight epaulettes.
Such a cliché, the neighbourhood bully
everyone warns their kids about. You gad
from nest to nest, baby mama to baby mama,
flick the kids an aphid and an excuse.

Having babies doesn’t make you special.
Congratulations, your plumbing works!
And I know what you’re going to say:
they’re so big-eyed, so vulnerable, it goes so fast,
you can’t shut up about them, they-are-meeeeeeeeee!

Then I hear bright urgent squeaks
broadcast from a shaggy straw bowl.
Ravenous, rivalrous,
stiletto to the heart.
And I am such a hypocrite.

I swoop home to my sleep-fragrant nestlings
whose clementine hearts thrum ever harder,
scarcely restrained by flesh. When we walk
I fend off strange dogs, unleashed men. I press
kisses to milk-cushioned cheeks—again, again—
just once more before they fledge.

About the author

Y. S. Lee is the winner of CV2’s 2022 Foster Poetry Prize. Her lyric essay, “Tek tek”, was shortlisted for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize and her fiction includes the YA mystery series The Agency (Candlewick Press). Ying’s debut picture book, Mrs. Nobody, is forthcoming from Groundwood Books.