Stephen M. Dickey
TACITURN, HIEROGLYPHIC CROWS
dodge traffic for morsels of carrion.
The blankness of their look is clarion,
pitch-black their mark on dirty snows.
Their gaping beaks rend pale blue sky
and they perch high up off the ground,
scanning a woodland lost-and-found
where sundry creatures stop and die.
Lured away by some unheard call,
they flap off slowly, and one might
wonder: do omens black as night
read their own shadows where they fall?
Bio
Stephen M. Dickey has recently published poetry in Rat's Ass Review, Asses of Parnassus, The Lyric, The Rotary Dial, Quarterday Review, and Indefinite Space, and a a short story in Word Riot. He has published numerous translations of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian fiction and poetry including Mea Selimović's Death and the Dervish and Miljenko Jergović's The Walnut Mansion.