Bright trail of sweet pear guides crow winding through hornbeams, desire tugging feathers crow forward, pear juice laughing around cheeks, speckling beak — in Russian class, I train my tongue to flicker/ Здравствуйте, to stumble мой дорогой/ друг & believe saying. My instructors tell me such words have no berry’s brightness. Do not ruffle tongue’s tip but fill throat with shiver. See? they say. Pear tumbles back in crow’s mouth & suspends swallow, bribes jaw to unsprout its pit, roulette of ramson & lily-of-valley. Cannot say голубой without/ coughing: sour shock: cherry under-ripened: bitter bleed binding throat—: * whole valley tries stillness & fails — eventually must all land fall/ into this? * Starving crow, downwards river Сунжа./ Bone’s slow broken bubble under skin. Alligators jeer & strip-quick crow, break each feather’s brittle jaw, coverts disappearing/ unbarbiceled in wind like nearby cries of white-fronted geese/ who you, пидор, rapids froth, what your name sharp as teeth where rest your flock? Crow’s caw: pink triangle choking mouth. Меня/ зовут crow murmurs & can’t say crow./ Geese honk & get cut -off, voices caught in echo’s amber capture — / Я не знаю — * empty nest, gutted & shook from ibex’s horns/ — * fifteen minutes from my home, a piece of the sky is beat into thousands of blackbirds, which are spit to the earth. — did their mothers bind their wings? — did their uncles push them from roofs? — did their fathers make a grave an undug thing, just a body abandoned in the woods? Teach me to speak Russian; — как вы говорите purify / defect / honor killing по-русскы tell me расскаже мне I need to throat this horrifying gutteral fruit, rumble my larynx’s inchoate mudslide—: * in morning, when sun does ususal rising, my eyelashes turn stone. I cut pears when I blink. Beeches backbend & pinch closed my nose; my yew/ -stitched lips slice free/ bright-polished snowcaps & force migration. I shiver crows. They ruffle my trachea wildly. If my throat keeps shaking, will their murders fly safely to me? * There are no birds in Чечня.

Glass: A Journal of Poetry is published monthly by Glass Poetry Press.
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