Nowhere did they charge: Guilty of ____. Me? I’m pacing the living room, full-throated and the men on screen are men. I will not compare a man to a soft-feathered bird, but have you read Eli Cranor’s Broiler? If we can agree that caging a flock without room to stretch their wings is inhumane, are we not obligated to pluck a senator’s phone number from the annals of the internet? I don’t know these men. I don’t know these men, but spittle flies from my lower teeth as I pace and shout. Maybe the beaded black eyes of birds is nothing to no one. Maybe that’s a double negative for a reason. Maybe subject and verb disagree for a reason. Where was I when no one offered due process? Brooding, probably. About money or the broken left-front burner on the stovetop. The worn-through soles of my Chuck Taylors. Nowhere did they chant USA as they bent the men in half. Imagine: being one of these half-bent men. Nowhere did they say, explicitly, run little birds, run. I’m making sense of why, when Kilmar Jr. looks in the mirror, he sees white tube socks scurrying a cement floor. A boy’s hand. Fingers weaving between bars. A whisper: Fly little flightless bird. When they plucked these men, did I—no-one’s mother—wretch? Nowhere is a person free when men cage other men. Nowhere is America. Nowhere. Maybe a gap between a boy’s baby teeth. Maybe a legion of milkless mothers. A lit match. An unbolted cage.
Copyright © 2026 by Jeanann Verlee. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 22, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.