Field Notes on Mobbing
Mobbing among birds and mammals should not be seen as a metaphor for what
happens among us humans. It should instead be recognized as the same thing,
the same bursting forth of two instincts at once: the instinct to join with others in
an unusually cohesive group, and the instinct to destroy a target.
– Kenneth Westhhues
The ivory tower is a perch
for fowl that like the altitude.
A beak is articulate. It speaks
through the dirt of worms.
There are birds of prey and birds
that are preyed upon.
The pecking begins before
the body knows it.
The first point of blood
provides pause for inquiry—
figures tilt their heads
to study the wounded throat.
What next? The crest, the chin,
the chest with downy specks?
Some prefer to watch the work
from a rocky distance.
Note: this also is participation.
No flurry of rescue,
a wing now bent at broken
angle, the back stippled red.
To pluck bright plumage
is both pleasure and survival.
Shrieks resemble laughter.
This is true in rooks and shrikes,
the more domesticated too
who feed from a hand.
Empirical evidence shows
three ways this will end—
First, the tail so torn
as to no longer delight.
Or else, a change of weather
permits swift escape.
Last but less likely,
a clawing back
alters the direction of attack,
the mob turning its eye
toward a new set of feathers.
See: Diagrams C through E.
Research is needed to say more
about the mottled eggs
of cruelty, what happens after
to the flock, the brace,
the cast, the convocation,
the exultation,
the murder, the siege,
the wreck, the circling wake.
Field Notes on the Muted Brilliance of the Female
Beside the male, we say
she’s brown instead
of red, her crest less
like a swoop of flame
emitting from a body
made of flame
than mud or dirt perhaps,
in winter less
like bloody feathering
on snow, than scab,
the dried complexion
of a wound.
We hear his voice, the ever
what-what-what,
and know that he’s demanding
from the world
response. There is no answer
for his appetite—
the seed he wants,
the maple sap he sips
from holes, the blossom
beaked from elms.
Beside the male, she’s modest
in her hunger.
But in the nest,
she’s audible at least
a note or two,
his song the interruption of
her throat, his song
repeating louder
what she sang,
as if the melody were his,
like winterberries
stolen from a branch.
Jehanne Dubrow is the author of five poetry collections, including most recently The Arranged Marriage, Red Army Red, and Stateside. Her sixth book of poems, Dots & Dashes, won the Crab Orchard Review Series Open Competition Award and will be published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2017. Her work has appeared previously in Diode as well as in Southern Review, New England Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas.