Angry Birds

When the eagles leave, spawned out red fish
must be mostly eaten, finished with silt,
sand, and eggs, a genetic frenzied push
to breed here, now, with furious force. We will
ourselves into bed, away from Netflix, X-
box, the new astonishing app that counts
calories, miles to go, snowflakes, the next
minute’s number of moans: O happy grunt
that says hey-ho, this is done, pixilated
and, best of all, uploadable as a ring tone
that goes fishy, fleshy, fowl. Someone’s IPhone
measures the speed of a bird penetrating
the lake to seize a foundering Kokanee.
“So fast!” Not death, the connectivity.

Tod Marshall was born in Buffalo, NY.  He earned an MFA degree from Eastern Washington University and a PhD in literature from the University of Kansas.  His first collection of poetry, Dare Say, was the 2002 winner of the University of Georgia’s Contemporary Poetry Series. He has also published a collection of his interviews with contemporary poets, Range of the Possible (EWU Press, 2002), and an accompanying anthology of theinterviewed poets’ work, Range of Voices (2005).  In 2005, he was awarded a Washington Artists Trust Fellowship. In 2009, his second collection, The Tangled Line, was published by Canarium Books; it was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.  His third collection will be released in February 2013.  He lives in Spokane and teaches at Gonzaga University.