Jungle Jangle

ISSUE: Summer 2015

sic on it, the cameras: witch-green greasepaint canopy—
pan down: the thick bamboo lattice
twine-bound—pan down: dirt with rags to gag up,
hijab spinached between the dun incisors—zoom
in and rack: what’s that meat there,
that bone there bindled in cured skin—presence:
fowl traffic, twittering pittas, bulbuls up-
ruffed, hum flies and flies plump as beans, boon
the snowy-browed, the rufous-chested singsong,
a jungle jangle—cut: her throat, his, rufous-chested,
that was was it months and months ago the camp
boomed—boom: boomed shotgun out the shot, clean
—cut: too many damn birds, dirty—cut: we can’t use this—
wrap: getting late, woot, fight of the century’s on tonight.

Douglas Kearney

Douglas Kearney is the author of three poetry collections, including Patter (Red Hen, 2014), a finalist for the California Book Award, and The Black Automaton (Fence, 2009), which was a National Poetry Series selection. His work has appeared in Poetry, Pleiades, and Callaloo. He wrote the libretto for the opera Crescent City, which premiered in Los Angeles in 2012. He teaches at CalArts, where he received his MFA in writing.