Crow shapes
by Merie Kirby
In the gutted plot across from the library, where a drive thru pharmacy is giving way to a disability resource center, walks a huge crow, feathers rumpled like an ill-fitting peacoat pulled on as he left the house. A new shape to shrug into, trying it on to see if it’s better than being a garbage bag blown from treetop to treetop on hot August winds. In September, part of a trio of goth teens in the parking lot of the thrift store – later, in winter, he appears as sleek as a seal on icy city curbs. Once he was rusty hinges complaining as a blizzard forced a gate open. In spring, a grim reaper of French fries and roadkill squirrels, performing his offices even as cars close in, his calculating eyes on the tires. In the early mornings he joins the cluster of glossy black magnolia blossoms in elms along the river. This morning a clatter in the rain gutter lining the second story brought me outside to see him rummaging for revelations in the melting snow.
Merie Kirby grew up in California and now lives in North Dakota. She teaches at the University of North Dakota. She is the author of two chapbooks, The Dog Runs On and The Thumbelina Poems. Her poems have been published in Rogue Agent, Orange Blossom Review, FERAL, Strange Horizons, and other journals. You can find her online at www.meriekirby.com.