WE ATE THE BIRDS <\/b>
\nby Margaret Atwood
\n<\/i>
\nWe ate the birds.
\nWe ate them.
\nWe wanted their songs to flow up
\nthrough our throats and burst out of our mouths,
\nand so,
\nwe ate them. <\/p>\n
We wanted their feathers
\nto bud from our flesh.
\nWe wanted their wings,
\nwe wanted to fly as they did,
\nsoar freely
\namong the treetops and the clouds,
\nand so we ate them. <\/p>\n
We speared them,
\nwe clubbed them,
\nwe tangled their feet in glue,
\nwe netted them,
\nwe spitted them,
\nwe threw them onto hot coals,
\nand all for love,
\nbecause we loved them. <\/p>\n
We wanted to be one with them.
\nWe wanted to hatch out of clean,
\nsmooth, beautiful eggs,
\nas they did, back when we
\nwere young and agile and innocent
\nof cause and effect,
\nwe did not want the mess of being born,
\nand so we crammed the birds
\ninto our gullets,
\nfeathers and all,
\nbut it was no use,
\nwe couldn\u2019t sing,
\nnot effortlessly as they do,
\nwe can\u2019t fly,
\nnot without smoke and metal,
\nand as for the eggs we don\u2019t stand a chance. <\/p>\n
We\u2019re mired in gravity,
\nwe\u2019re earthbound.
\nWe\u2019re ankle-deep in blood,
\nand all because we ate the birds,
\nwe ate them a long time ago,
\nwhen we still had the power to say no.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WE ATE THE BIRDS by Margaret Atwood We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths, and so, we ate them. We wanted their feathers to bud from our flesh. We wanted their wings, we wanted to fly as they did, … Continue reading “reduce your carbon footprint”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1722,128],"class_list":["post-4199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-poem","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foxtongue.com\/dreampepper\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}