A.E. Stallings

Hooded Crow: Corvus cornix

On windy days the crows cavortDown slides of air for autumn sport.They dive and spiral, twirl and spin,Then levitate to ride again.

That wind that makes their airy slideComes tumbling down the mountainside,Tousles the heads of trees and dropsTo the sea beyond the cypress tops,

And drinking at the sea’s blue lipsMakes paper sailboats out of...

I bought an antique sieve of hammered tinFor its decorative holes

Patterned like a flower, or a star explodingAt one of the poles.

I think of all it has sifted: flour and sugar,Dust and light,

What must be ground so fine, so fine! to pass through –Milled, contrite.

Light and time it has sifted, like a metal welkinOf punctual stars,

The cold hieroglyphs of the constellations,The raised scars

On...

Warmer and warmercreep the late Januarys,disturbed beauty of

precocious flowers,the ease of a year’s first swim.Pulsing in their silk

tent in the tree’s crotchthe pine processionariesbegin to emerge

head to tail to headto tail, inevitableas cause and effect,

the rungs of numbers.Column of janissaries,they pour like roller

coasters or compoundcentipedes, devouring morerange each year,...

I speak to the unbeautiful of this bird.                                         James Merrill

The peacock thinks he can’t be seen:Stealthily towards the cat-food bowlHe stalks, while I’m behind the screenCoffee in hand: peacock patrol.More blue than the Saronic, green

As bristles...

Sisters, infernal virgins, would you kill again,Knowing the endless sieves you would refill again?

Night is where the day’s mistakes repeat,I swallow the bitter crumb, the sleeping pill again.

Isn’t the womb the sieve, the moon the springFrom which blood’s phases rise, and fill, and spill again?

I carried thrice, bore twice, and once I grievedAnd shouldered my vessel up the...