Some Birds Were Welcome for a Time

By Jen Karetnick

​                 An American Sentence Acrostic

 

Before he moved out for good, my brother brought home birds.

They were parakeets he kept in his room, the left spoke of the split

 

wheel we shared upstairs. He controlled the only bathroom

across the hall from him. He and his birds whistled Springsteen, those

 

roads they’d prefer to fly over someday. But the male would

pick on the female. She plucked out her own feathers. Too

 

young to know better, the parakeets would percuss each other,

tumbleweeds down to the bottom of the cage, that one last time thumping

 

to the female’s death. Her plumage faded to the color of a sour

pickle. And the male didn’t brighten. He also bleached

 

and died. Without wings to escape, my brother could have left his door a-

jar once more. But he didn’t. He kept it closed up tight against me.