Happy birthday, Big Other contributor Marc Vincenz! Celebrate by reading this sextet of Vincenz poems we published in 2024!  

A Starling’s Defense

Ambience and verse
on the surface of the clouds.

A mouthful of moist élan
in a pocketful of wind.

A talon of fuzzy-
green caterpillars.

Tall moonflowers
with immobile heads,

eye above as eye below,
following the draft of the shadow,

or the slim slow spiral
of the carrion wasp

gorging on
yesterday’s dead.

Into the Unseen

And it goes deeper
than you could imagine,

deeper still than the very last layer,
for there is no full stop:

the butcherbird scries these pastures
since the day the sky

reflects in the water;
she knows each cell

is linked to one another,
deep to their eternal end:

all those circles of infinity
bound together in a single forever

of voles and beetles
and crickets and parasites.

[Insert Raptor Here]

They wanted us to say, we’re beautiful killing machines in beautiful killing fields, or through the scrubby woodland until we reach the pudgy pixies in the forest. They wanted us to say, we drive market fluctuations, and never quite know when to bottom out.

They wanted us to say they wanted to get a panda into this poem.

Instead, we inserted something else, something mildly terrifying:

Imagine, it descends from up high, way above the clouds, or a brief flicker on your retinal lens…and suddenly it falls: you hear the whoop! the scratching molecules of air (and you know that sound, you’re a warm-blooded creature, after all), then that slow whoop down the tunnel, that last outburst of despair…

Then, you’re nearly there, admiring that exquisite mother-of-pearl inlay in the more common pearly gates, but well-crafted lacquer work on the doorframe.

Instead, we’d rather say nothing at all; but isn’t that always the way when you’re put under heavy pressure?

The Rhinoceros Affair

Even after the party, after being plied with all manner of quaint aphorisms, I still hungered for his touch.

I couldn’t resist spreading the word that he was the best ever to grace my ramshackle cabins.

And, as I told the others, he made my blood simmer, broil and roil.

’Course, the theory goes all the magic came from that single, majestic horn, sharpened to an immaculate point.

There were those who enviously wanted to lop it off.

Others figured it might be useful later, and considered renting a warehouse down on the docks, so whichever parts would be harvested and sold might be hastily transported anywhere in the known world.

Late in the early hours, after the last nightcap, his legend still circulates the empty halls.

Rats, Sparrows, Mosquitoes, and Flies

After a third breakfast pestered by mysterious buzzing flies, with his mouth full of bananas and buttered raisin buns, the great dictator announced his new campaign.

The real mouthpiece of the party, a woman named Hailey Comet, who proffered feathers and felt fabrics, had her underlings denounce the pests of the cities: the rats, the sparrows, the mosquitoes; and, in particular, she noted, the flies, who had a penchant for the great dictator’s sweet lemon teas and those cream cakes he ate almost every morning for breakfast.

The Four Pests Must Be Eradicated!

stated the headline in the Agricultural Daily News.

The article went on to announce rates of pay for each and every of the four critters presented to the Ministry of Pest Control in an unanimated state of arrest. For rats, the tail would suffice. For flies and mosquitoes, the whole body would need to be presented, and would be sorted and weighed by the ounce. The dead sparrows would fetch the most, and their eggs, half their dead mother’s bodyweight.

Tomba, a lad of no more than fifteen, grabbed his slingshot from under his bed on the way to school. He figured he might supplement the family’s watermelon sales income with a handful of sparrows and a couple of rats. After all, what could be the use of a sparrow or a rat, he muttered to himself. Right out of his house, he spied a sparrow on his neighbor’s rooftop, whipped out his handy minion, David, and shot a rock. The rock missed the sparrow, but smashed one of his neighbor’s clay shingles.

He ran, and kept running.

Meanwhile, back at the capitol, the great dictator sat in his boudoir and dispelled all his imagination to his court. The butlers had spatulas, fragrant towels, wet wipes, and freshly laundered underpants at the ready.

“Actually, I think it’s the sparrows,” the great dictator said, “not the flies, after all.”

Slipping into his underwear, he glanced at his fourth butler, Amagoo, and asked if there was a full moon tonight. Amagoo nodded and sprayed a great dash of LOVEINDASUNSHINE™ in the great dictator’s general direction.

“But, in the end,” said the great General himself, scratching his testicles, “it’s all about the intellectual property rights.”

Acid Rain

That eve, the herons landed on Honey Lake and were fussing and fussing, strutting the shores in a frenzy, poking each other, scratching the dirt, pulling up riverweed and tossing it fretfully into the woods.

From the edge of the woods, the hares stared on. They knew the oak leaves protected them.

Up in the maples, a magpie heaved, then puffed up his chest, believing his time had surely come.

Soon the frogs chimed in, singing off-key—this was no mating call, more a call to arms.

A field mouse zigged and zagged down from the upper meadow, stopping briefly at each unexposed boulder to see who had previously engraved their initials. He saw his own next to his first love’s, and resolved to scratch them out.

Field Marshal Toad led his well-equipped regiment straight through the woods and down to the riverbank, where the ranks dispersed, each setting up their own rat-saddle and tack, and raising their glasses to the mothergod, Mrs. Frogmoore.

The lake water bubbled and fizzed and swirled. Microns of unnatural elements whipped through her confluences, strange shimmering colors, some never seen before. (Fragments of a life once led, on another continent in another constellation.) And along the edges, a damselfly skimmed the surface searching for life, but found no one.

On the shore, the frogs were delighted as the worms rose dutifully to be devoured.

(Image: Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity-Nets [XSHTQ] (2017))