Hallelujah, Birdie Jaworski is back! After a five-month hiatus, she's returned to the mic with her inimitable je ne sais quoi and two drop-ins: a somber five-minute piece, "Shattered," and the slightly lurid, amusing prose poem under review here.

Jaworski's down-to-earth speech inflections are anything but "polished." She guides us through out-of-the-way nooks where, as Auden said, "executives / Would never want to tamper." If you are hoping to listen to the mellifluous lilt of a slick radio personality, you may be disappointed in Jaworski's tell-it-like-it-is vocal style.

If, on the other hand, you are looking for an evergreen-fresh "voice" and new ways of depicting family life, you may enjoy Jaworski's account of her dead pet parrot, Rory. The story involves preserving the bird's carcass in a kitchen freezer, with special attention paid to Jaworski's two sons, named, as usual, for their ages, Twelve and Ten. Fascinated by Rory's remains enclosed in an Earl Gray tea tin, they return to it as if to a religious relic.

When Jaworski and her sons finally give the parrot a proper burial outdoors, her superb description of a crow swooping and almost landing on the gravesite vaguely recalls Poe. Yet Jaworski's vision is sweeter and less gloomy than Poe's in "The Raven."

Is it a coincidence that a woman named Birdie deals with a dead bird? Be that as it may, I'm grateful to welcome The Bird Woman back into PRX's nest. My only questions have to do with Rory's gender: Jaworski's written description refers to Rory as a male, but the piece itself refers to the parrot as a female. Then, too, if Rory dies in mid-winter and is buried in spring -- while Jaworski sings the vernal Spanish anthem, "De Colores" -- is her reference to "falling leaves" confusingly autumnal?

These itsy-bitsy discrepancies are easily fixable. The big point is that Birdie Jaworski has refused to rest in peace. I recommend her colorful new piece with all the enthusiasm of P.T. Barnum selling the state of New Mexico to PDs in various states of exhaustion.