Corvid cannibalism, beak of a broken brother, blood
stain the echoes of wings in the snow. Heels
on ice, packed thin from foot traffic. In the distance
invisible chatter, skateboards on the wind,
the mountain wind. Grass yellow peaking out of whiteness
like blonde stubble, the morning’s endless
shadowed growth. Suddenly I am painfully aware
everyone carries bones within them, walking
skeletons crackling inside clothes of rancid sinew
& ladder stitched skin. X-ray phantoms!
Spooky specters of our own inevitable! I recall
my first funeral, the dull Bible plodding
through a child’s ears like a headache or an adult
going on & on about stocks & stakes & golf.
Reminder: bird tongue upon rolled up beaded eye.
Reminder: I carry my own death with me
less like a friend, more like a spare pencil or lip balm.
Flesh I expose to feel good & feel fear
as a hollow boned, feathered, uncertain frolick.
Something that soothes the form.
Form in community with form, the colorful flocks
of scarves & dyed hair & pride flag
painted shoes & skull tattoos. Blades of three toed
judges, croaking their collective songs
as they hunt battered fries & fallen banana peppers
or bathe in the fresh snow, rolling around
on the rooftops called home. When I’m called home
I don’t go. When I need to go
to class, I watch birds eating each other, I witness
the horrified students watching the birds
eating each other--some with mouths a little open,
others with spider-eyed wariness & hunger,
everyone equal parts humbled & humiliated.
After all, no one has stepped in to stop it.
The creature on the ground still gasping a little
as panic siezes my sex: I know it’s those who fuck
& eat me might also want me dead. & when I return
an hour later to the quad, the scene of the crime,
someone has wiped the mess from the snow
as if that hungry betrayal made the body
relearn how to fly. Or maybe that after violence even
evidence won’t let me be beautiful if this is how I die.
