Corseted whittles of infinite birdcage
at Bangkok’s open market, and all
I wanted was the toy peacock.
A thousand teal eyes blinked wide
its splayed open aluminum tail.
I stuck a hand in for the turnkey
bespeaking a gear-notched
belly of bird shocks. The knob’s
guttural scritch pressed backwards,
echoing the real bird’s raspy alarm cry.
The mechanical knows its place.
I look up how a muster of peafowl
once bred in teakwood forests
under feathery boughs until the trees
thinned. Anyone can see the clear
cuts from space, or consider
the old order’s twin need for logging:
more sleek furniture for Scan,
fewer trunks during war time
for any one enemy to hide behind.
That era sits under layers of machines
manufacturing  here  after counterfeit
there, so that clearing my own space
on a teak desk for the toy to stride
across mimics a motion begun
before my hand was born. Trees
unearthed first by elephant power,
later bulldozed down, the corpses’
side-blown roots exposed to air.
Who wouldn’t like to know
what naked is for. I want to be
put in my place. Happens, keeps
happening, traffic cry, city grid,
snarl. Some coming for R and R,
some coming from the clearing,
that empties full, fills empty, 
thousand-eyed, the fugitive branches
gone to ghost now and the limbs,
shadow-ravenous, wrapping round.