I Think They Are Crows

About a hundred flying in the green-tinted zone
between slate sky and vanishing half-sun.
Parked cars grow black fuzz.
The world mutes. 
Their flapping wings
are grand pianos falling.
My heart twists as I brace for the crash
of soundboards splintering—Beethoven, Mozart,
Gershwin, Tatum, Monk—destroyed in a final
Everything Chord.
Coyotes claw their ears.
I feel a ripple underground as I lose the last remnant
of sun. Silence blows across bruised sky and land.
For a moment, I hear inside myself—pulse drum, lung flute—
interrupted by voices: we’ll make garrotes from the strings.

Published in The Pedestal Magazine


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