By Jenny Ward Angyal
Gibsonville, NC, USA
Hokusai painted them, Issa wrote about them, and Mao did his best to exterminate them.
It’s true that Eurasian tree sparrows gorge themselves on spilled grain. So, during the Great Leap Forward, the Four Pests Campaign encouraged schoolchildren to kill as many sparrows as they could, tearing up nests and smashing eggs. People beat pots and gongs to drive them from their roosts until the birds dropped from exhaustion. A billion sparrows died. With few birds left to eat them, hungry locusts swarmed through grain fields and rice paddies. Upwards of forty million people starved.
gazing
into Pandora’s box—
nothing left
but a tattered feather
and a mirror full of cracks