Crow Totem
This soft, human flesh
Proves insufficient covering
Belies the strength of muscled mass
Attached to ligaments inside of me
The homo-sapien taxonomy
Wasted on these weak stemmed vertebrae
I much prefer the coarse tongued beauty of
Burning haunches, taut
. Swiftly cutting through my dark
I lust for the shifting bones
. That crack inside their sockets
To break and reconnect,
Fuse together like the stitched seams of a pocket
I crave to tear at these old, dry veins
With the talons of some bird of prey
Reflecting the moon as it pulls these menstrual tides
And orchestrates the stale heart to commence its symphony
Oh! The animal blood and its glorious singing
My lungs let loose a wild cry
I am the dark crow
Warning
The imminence of my transitioning
Dangerous and Noble Things
My head is a flock of great winged birds
Beating their escape from the pressures of their cages
For the raw freedom
Atop winter’s sparse tree branches
I will coat these frozen limbs
With the down of soft snow feathers
And prove to violet spring
That these branches can carry the weight
I am on the cusp of an awakening
As the snow hangs
Heavy in the belly of the clouds
Ready to birth its storm
From the firmament
And I will fly to greet the frost that forms
Ice on my eye lashes
I will be that great snow owl
Finding strength in whitewashed fields
That blind in glaring winter sun
Forcing our eyes to see
All we’d rather disregard
The white lies we tell ourselves
The way we keep our great wings bound
Mine are sprawled out once more
I had forgotten the broad range of their shadow
How powerful and strong
Like these evergreen trees and their command of the snow
And it is in the hush of falling snow that surrounds me
Like a great winged bird atop the tallest evergreen
In a snow covered forest
I have found autonomy
This is how we Change
September is for the golden leaves
October for the dead ones
November turns their skeleton stems to ashes
December is the tomb
. That holds the birch box casket
. Below six inches of snow
No headstone
I can smell the decay of October
Like you smell the roses in May
Only I hear the owls
. Hollow
. And the crows
While you whistle a tune
Knife sharp
Like your favorite jays
They attack other birds you know
Brutishly they dive
Naivety would have you compare them to mothers who protect their young
But I say it’s downright similar to greedy men
Securing their wealth- attractive bantam birds guarding their plethora of worms
A warble becomes a shriek
Tiny feet-
Talons clawing into feathers that will become strangled and bent
So you will never fly right again
This is how seasons change.
How our fortunes are divined through a wind gust of tea leaves
We are never more ourselves than in a candid moment
The afternoon sun will set the leaves to burn
Like a kiln sets fire to wet clay
Harden and temper the perceptions we create
As we brace ourselves for the cold and the snow and the dark
Await the obvious black tipped blue
The plucked out casualty
So jarring against the soundless white.
Alise Versella is the author of Five Foot Voice, Onion Heart, and A Few Wild Stanzas. She is a contributing author for Rebelle Society and has been published on Ultraviolet Tribe and Elephant Journal, to name a few. She resides as coffee enthusiast and dessert queen at the Jersey shore.
