The grackles with their helmets of blue, beady yellow eyes
congregate in huge flocks, forage in the fields
but move into civilian yards, making their presence known
with their loud and audacious thievery, grand display of size.
You see the babies and eggs they’ve stolen from their nests
dropped from the skies to the cement.
We shudder at the atrocity.
The only birds that will hang out with them are other grackles
blackbirds, crows, birds of the same feather.
They roost in the trees planning their next attack.
Upon their retreat, the songbirds return
among the sunflowers.

Judge’s Comments:
It's hard to write lyrical, image-driven, political poems, but this is a great example of a poet succeeding at just that. The grackles with their "helmets of blue" arrive in "civilian yards" and mimicking the violence of war, pillage nests and drop eggs to the ground like bombs. This poem uses a chilling conceit that yes, makes its readers "shudder at the atrocity.”