Tengu Lament
Jennifer Ruth Jackson
We are not demons, us birds of ashen paint
Each flap across your sky rendering it a tender bruise
Our talons shod in flip-flops (synthetic delicacy)
Words for “fake” were once foreign to our squawking tongues
Until we landed in your fields of green corn and sugarcane
Half of us use your Internet, as cell phones buzz in bumblebee song
Screeches of our fathers neutered in forced articulation
We are not demons, us eaters of cheeseburgers
They pass through our beaks, mushy and false-hot
Replacing, though not replicating, fresh flesh-kill
Our nests upon a hillside morphed into McMansions
Cave lore of our kind dripped into brick graffiti
Quiet gods, once powerful and mysterious, all our own
Disappeared under the strobe-flash of church and temple
Gaudy statues, screaming preachers, sweaty money
We are not demons, us displaced aliens of lost belief
Though most of us (now) are telemarketers
