Dara Wier’s ninth book, Reverse Rapture, is forthcoming from Verse Press in April 2005. New poems are appearing in Seattle Review, Turnrow, The Massachusetts Review, Boston Review, Crazyhorse, Octopus, Green Mt. Review, Denver Quarterly and New American Writing. For the spring of 2005, she is the Louis Rubin writer in residence at Hollins University. She directs the MFA program for poets and writers at the University of Massachusetts. Magnetized Annunciator Dara Wier If ever there were words for birds These come as some surprise, distressed, Dying. Days on end, routine as a tide. As awful as a fish who’s drowned. Disturbed as though atomized. In order to listen better, longer. A not-all-that-well-recorded loop. That’s the sound of dying birds. Revised it’s the sound of birds In distress. Coming out of weatherproof speakers In a weatherproof box. From somewhere deep near the bluegray trunk Down spun magnolia’s glazed greenblack leaves. An awful anxious clattering of fractured calls. The sounds of dying birds. Manufactured to scare away other birds. Calibrated to keep other birds away. To keep a tree bird-free. To scare birds away from a birdproof tree. I am President George W. Bush and I approve This message.