CORVIDS

by Jonathan Travelstead

Image source: WebEcoist

Want to catch an illegal alien? Study the crow,
its shiny things. Foil hat. Mirrors, chewing gum wrappers
wadded in nests.

We haven't been family for three hundred million years.
Their minds are closer to the lizard brain
where we parted ways, descending different trees.

Yet watch them make tools from straws they use,
solving riddles which require up to eight steps of critical thinking
to deftly pincer out the strip of raw beef.

Crafty. Pistachio, floating in a glass. I watched a crow fly
between an alley and a picnic table, plinking pebbles
and small stones until enough water

displaced the nut to within reach of its beak.
They're smarter than you. We haven't evolved in the right direction
to distinguish their motivations.

Pepper them with shot, and they remember, tell the next
generation about the change in route and elevation.
Screen a dome over the tomatoes walled within your garden

and a few tunnel the fence, but first send scouts
proficient in the killdeer's portrayal of a broken wing
along your flank, divert you while a murder

marches on the front gate. They'll rob you blind. In Arizona,
I hear blackberry pies vanish from windows.
Sheets hanging on the line disappear.

Canadian fishermen drop lines into holes
rough-cut in ice, later report their lines drawn up in a spaghetti tangle
of nylon, scales, and black feathers on the red snow.

Crow, rook, blackbird, raven- call them what you want.
Hell, my Chevy broke down near Roswell and one completed
my solenoid's broken circuit with a flat-head,

then wouldn't take a dime! Each can do the job of ten men.
They don't think like we do.

They don't need much.

Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro. Having finished his MFA at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, he now works on an old dirt-bike he hopes will one day get him to the salt flats of Bolivia. He has published work in The Iowa Review and on Poetrydaily.com among others, and his first collection How We Bury Our Dead by Cobalt/Thumbnail Press is forthcoming in February, 2015.

BORDER PATROL, ARIZONA

by Jonathan Travelstead

In-processing. Sunnyside High School, Tucson

The square-jawed sergeant snatches my orders.

Nothing that matters burns in the desert. Congratulations,

Airman First Class- You’re a medic. Shunts me

to a female private beneath the basketball hoop who,

with an IV and an orange bruised soft as skin,

instructs me with lessons on the military’s care towards aliens.

Cups my orange-clasped hand in hers. Finds the sweet spot

in four or less punctures. Suddenly it’s my lone hand

which holds the fruit. My hand puncturing its rind

with eighteen gauge holes like pinpoint windows

I imagine unlatch from the inside. Because the only beliefs

that matter in battle are attendance, minutes later

I find myself burdened beneath kevlar, a helmet

two wars old and missing its lining. Topographic maps

of dusty cattle-roads (useless after the first washout)

winged under one arm. Under the other, orders amended

with signatures validating my crude proficiency in Tex-Mex,

the Law of Armed Conflict, rules of engagement

briefings, and a crash course in medical training

to include intubation on all things American. America.

Where the line items that qualify for participation include

1) Warm Body, and 2) Able to throw a loaded die.

Just then the barefaced, double butterbar lieutenant

marches from the bivouac of a coach’s office

to a know-nothing airman planted at attention

beneath the free throw line. The way he exchanges salutes

of diplomatic importance, recites phonetically, de rigueur

from an index card as if each word were a sharp-edged stone

tumbled, slicing at the thin flesh in his mouth:

Como fway to entry nameento? It’s not me there at all,

but a boy, or a body-double who does not hesitate, says Si

just as the keys to a medic’s humvee and all its bastard

line-and-tackle plop into his outstretched hand. Tylenol.

Cases of Gatorade’s yellow electrolyte gruel

we dare not ask whose hands on what assembly line

in which Latin-speaking country have filled and capped.

A backboard projecting from the canvas window,

and he- newly-christened honorary phd in guardship,

Grand Poo-bah of Sonora’s mesas - is the one charged

with stitching together all the dotted lines.

Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as a firefighter and currently works as a full-time firefighter for the city of Murphysboro. Having finished his MFA at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, he now works on an old dirt-bike he hopes will one day get him to the salt flats of Bolivia. He has published work in The Iowa Review and on Poetrydaily.com among others, and his first collection How We Bury Our Dead by Cobalt/Thumbnail Press is forthcoming in February, 2015.