Blink

Disruption, a worthy device — let
a crow’s black caesura carry off the jewelry,
carry off the mites of will. A blink is
a pause and a stanza breaks:

Stare too long and eyes bleed. Sweep
the junction with a membrane.
There’s a ‘coon in a garbage can,
the rattling tin tells all, and

Flies ascend like angels in heat
on coils of wet piscine fumes.
A crow flakes its beak on a rivet
and waits atop the busbarn:

No craving for flies, but the limp
packets of fries untrashed
by a scavenger’s hand, or
a carved breastbone. Nothing is rigid,

These things are prey, these things
are salvage in the periphery, there,
just behind the end stops, just behind
the teeth that flash in the wind break.

Image: Donald Giannatti on Unsplash