Keen Caw

by Jacquelyn Shah

* We made tangible feathers from intangible thoughts

stuck beaks to our mouths using ampersand glue

* I work quietly, wheeling over myself

a crow over death, a crow in mourning

* . . . broken-tongued . . . now I can caw, understood

* This crow knows starlight comes from his own voice

[Clark Moore, Pablo Neruda, Sujata Bhatt, Alice Notley]

Crow-creating in this crepuscular period of gloom––weary nights weak mutter

lament––when I am moved to make crone new grow claw & wing

stick beak to lip spark beady eye from eye bedight with feet

tests the flap of inspiration, bringing risk of work precipitate

from frangible feather-thought I seek to find starlight in keen & caw

So I caution cranium: keep weathered brain from strain to slow down development

that devil not devolve wild thought into warring elements until too-open beak

should bludgeon with bleak shrieks or slur with mere insinuation

Highlight with discretion, be blatant but sleek

sly sophisticate of somewhat-sorcery & recherché accretion

Be cagey, I counsel inky-self, in your uncaged ascension

II.

Hatched then as Crow, black smattering

of plumage eye-tongue-heart gleamy jet & filmed in mystery

I’ll raise colossal wing till raven-like tip points

to rampant pig-grunt cupidity & penury across our spacious plain

Huge Crows, shivering with horror

are wheeling over alighting on, mobbing mourner-me

Nothing can escape this crone-as-Crow now, prone to look-note-craft, pulling

words & ampersands to crop, digesting then divesting, pressing black blaze

into veil of verse No chintzy chirp, Crow’s cardinal Caw! Caw! denouncing suns

as reckless white-white-white blinding streams of minus-light scorching fruit & amber grain

Bird-tweet is pinchbeck With breakneck pace Crow grows riposte, arcane

III.

Will I die soon?

Leave behind all keening, corvine brickbats?

Soon see before that death, a death . . . a death–a death–a death–a death . . .

collapse that marks the growth of a world distorted, no longer solid

but cracked & sordid? Darkness there nothing more forevermore

where someone always lies This time flies black flag of too-white self

posturing as pilot more pygmy than giant old It–Guy with swag & swat

sounds unsound steerings stoppings skullduggery

IV.

Do not ask the world what is it, what doesn’t only visit

but revisits revisits revisits: iniquity of unimagined gross

stupidity Human plight is

redblackbrownyellowwhite inscrutable & durable absurd & risible

Let Crow disambiguate a bit, gravitate to one clear bit (write it!): loss = disaster

Mislaid crowns on cretin-crook & cronies? Dismayed, crone begins to gag & diss . . .

then stops . . . keeps hope & bird-hop From loss reforms flapping faster furtively, furiously

Crow flaps faster-faster-faster! Crone, revivified, unveils in verse from head-light

new voice, keen strain––Caw! Caw! What risk?––aster-minus-dis may multiply, accrue to––

* * S T A R L I G H T * *