Angry Birds

by Adam Wyeth

I’m lost in this world of crazy
kamikazes selflessly flinging
their harlequin bodies

against timber planks, panes
of glass and metal bars
to snuff out a spread of swine.

Wasted with flu,
the only thing I can do
is play a game on my phone

the single premise of which
is to catapult birds
against a litter of pigs

hidden in various structures.
Struck down with a fever
over a hundred, health

feels like a childhood
that can’t be recaptured.
Poorly, as the prodigal son

who squandered everything.
I can create chaos
with the stroke of my finger,

send raptors to collapse
complex constructions,
pickaxing and squawking

into scaffolding. Shooting starlings

explode into formations,
tumbling down on a battalion

of pug–nose snorters
who keep growing and dying
with every level of delirium.

I can only dream
that these feathered–friends
hold some answer —

that they are my deliverers
carrying me home.
Wherever that may be?