Schlimmbesserung

(def: German. An improvement that makes things worse.)

Benched downtown, lipping a latte, my eyes
pause at the vast new construction
glistening across the street. In its shadow

I watch a bird die into the third story
of its reflection. Falling, it intimates to me
the terribly intimate stupidity of the engineer

who flowered the foresight that birds
might mistake themselves for their reflections,
but the engineer, who, nevertheless

got up every morning and shaved money
from the budget of his building,
now grows his dead birds on the pavement.

Inbetween Math and Poetry