It’s fuck and eggs at two a.m. for these birds, 
dog breath-warm air before the storm, the very 
ironic-even-to-the-clock moniker 

“mockingbird” showing absolute disdain for 
wandering coyotes and somnolent folks 
in this house. Maybe this is an avian cue 

from Frank Zappa to get it on by the modus 
screw-them operandi, So who gives a fuck, 
anyway? Which is their stated intention, 

though taking a fuck might have been more in mind. 
Maybe they are hoping to charm statues out 
of marble trees, from sitting on porcelain 

with the stony countenance of not giving 
a shit while giving a shit for shit’s sake. 
The airspace goes crapulent, diuretic 

with involved warbling, a Mozartian 
hard-on if ever a fuck-fest spun by the 
reproductive measure, trill and mordant and 

oh, let me run and screw you silly. And they 
might be right. Small wonder they sound so pretty, 
stuffed with operatic libido between 

feathers and dawn, bones and tunes buoyant enough 
to make a black- or midnight-blue morning lean, 
if not to grace, then a welcome substitute. 

* Title is from the title poem in John Ashbery’s collection A Wave (Penguin, 1985).

Poet’s Commentary

I have actually enjoyed the moonlight serenades of the avian lovelorn. Since “nutty” and “rutty” rhyme (if such a word as “rutty” does exist), going balls to the wall with the mocking birds (intentionally written as two words here) seemed only natural, with some Frank Zappa-inspired subversion for good measure. The word “pretty” might seem cute, compared with the vocabulary surrounding it, but it is also a nod to Leonard Bernstein’s song “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story. (Earlier in this poem, there’s also a direct quotation from Zappa’s song “Watermelon in Easter Hay.” You get to find that one on your own.) Per request, this poem might be something “that ain’t been there before.” The story of birds and bees might be old-hat but it might not have been phrased quite like this.

Jonathan Yungkans

is a Los Angeles-based writer and photographer with an MFA from California State University, Long Beach. His work has appeared in San Pedro Poetry Review, Synkroniciti, West Texas Literary Review, Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and other publications. His second poetry chapbook, Beneath a Glazed Shimmer, won the 2019 Clockwise Chapbook Prize and was published in February 2021 by Tebor Bach.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ It Belongs to Each of Us Like a Blanket by Jonathan Yungkans, Winner of “The Question of Questions” Ekphrastic Writing Challenge (Issue 15, September 2022)

⚡ Le Grand Matin by Jonathan Yungkans, a Finalist in MacQ’s Triple-Q Writing Challenge (Issue 11, January 2022)

⚡ La Porte by Yungkans in MacQ’s special Christmas Eve issue (10X, December 2021)

⚡ Two Duplex Poems, plus author’s notes on the poems and on the form, by Yungkans in Issue 10 of MacQ (October 2021)

⚡ Lawful and Proper, poem in Rise Up Review (Fall 2020)

⚡ Cadralor in the Key of F-Sharp as It Cuts into My Spine, in the inaugural issue of Gleam (Fall 2020)

⚡ I’d Love to Cook Like Hannibal Lecter [video], read by the poet at an event sponsored by Moon Tide Press (10 October 2019) celebrating the anthology Dark Ink: A Poetry Anthology Inspired by Horror

⚡ Saving the Patient, poem in The Voices Project (18 January 2018)