Half-bird Joachim Frank
(first published in theeel, now defunct)
This morning, a scream and a shout; my wife is out walking to keep in shape. When I come to the spot she must have passed at the time she let out the scream, I see this bird, this half-bird — black feathers where there are still feathers — this bloody thing, organs pouring out. Teen-lingo: gross. In situations like this I can act in quite a detached way, my eyes one thousand miles away. Looking from a space ship. Yogurt, is the word on my mind. How to prevent foul decomposition. Bugs. Bacteria. Botulism. A yogurt can and if I’m lucky, the fitting lid. Anaerobic metabolism? Headlines, thirty thousand years from now: Miraculously Conserved Bird Found in Plastic Container. The Bird Eaters of the American Northeast. What Else Did They Eat? I find the perfect yogurt can in the garbage. Vanilla, non-fat. Little did you know, little half-bird. There’s the matching non-fat lid. We’re in business. I take the Perspective section of the newspaper to grab the part of the bird that still exists. Don’t touch dead animals, my mother used to say. They make you sick. Spaetzchen — little sparrow — is what German couples call each other. They mean tenderness, though in the back of their mind the word sparrow makes them think of sex. The Perspective has the late Sinatra’s mob face on its cover. His mouth is open — it always is. I let him have it; the dead can’t get any deader by touching the dead. In with it, into the yogurt container, plastic sarcophage. Just as I close the lid, birdie is looking back at me with half-closed eyes: it’s the front that hasn’t been eaten by the cat. (Sky clouded over, mother of all rain storms, the darkness of it all — back to the darkness of the egg.) Because, Sparkle our furry orange cat was out all night, which proves he’s the one who chewed up the bird’s behind. Sparkle can’t defend himself because of his innate lack of linguistic and analytic talents. Yet cats are guilty by default. Sparkle looks at me this minute without a shade of guilt. He’s beyond guilt, or better: before guilt. The bird takes one more glance at me, I look back: that’s it, see you later, see you in the aftermorrow, no more diving through thin air, no more bird’s eye view, no more this, no more that, no more fucky-fuck for five seconds on the dirt road. No more more. Bye bird, bye better half of you, fuck-part already fucked up, mind-part never amounted to much, for want of grey matter. I place lid on container. Truth in advertisement: fat-free for once. Should have stuffed mint in said half-bird’s mouth. WhatamItalkingabout? Mosquitoes, worms! Dignity of last wish. Can’t think of a bird who’s a veggie. Flying, flapping wings takes so much protein. But gone.
